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THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
HENRY FIELDING, ESQ. 



One hundred and ten 
copies were printed. 
This is No. -ML 




HEMtt FIE1.DIXG.JETATIS XLVIII 



Portrait of Fielding 

from Hogarth's drawing 



The Life and Writings of Henry 
Fielding, Esq.; by Thomas 
Keightley. Taken from the pages 
of Frasers Magazine; and edited 
by Frederick Stoever Dickson. 




Cleveland: The Rowfant Club 

December, 1907 



18 1908 
< j- ass /♦- 






GOHY B. 



Copyright, 1907 

BY 

THE ROWFANT CLUB 









CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface, by Frederick Stoever Dickson . . n 
Life and Writings of Henry Fielding, Esq. . 17 
Annotations ........ 103 

Appendix A: Biographies of Fielding . . 113 

Appendix B: The First Edition of "Tom Jones" 
and the Second, compared . . . .129 

Index . . . . . . . . -139 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Portrait of Fielding, from Hogarth's Drawing 

Frontispiece 



Portrait of Fielding, from bust in Town-hall, 
Taunton, England ...... 12 

Portrait of Fielding, from miniature in posses- 
sion OF HIS GRAND-DAUGHTER, MlSS SOPHIA FIELD- 
ING . . . . . . . . .14 

Book-plate of Rt. Hon. Basil Fielding, Earl of 
Denbigh; 1703 ....... 104 

Title-page of the first issue of the six-volume 
edition (the genuine first edition) of "tom 
Jones" ......... 130 

Title-page of the second issue of the six-volume 

edition of "Tom Jones". . , . . 130 f 

Page lxiii [Errata] of the first issue of the 
six-volume edition of "Tom Jones" . . 131 

Page lxiii of the second issue of the six-volume 
edition of "Tom Jones" ..... 131 



PREFACE. 

Thomas keightley, a son of Thomas Keightley 
of Newtoun, County Kildare, Ireland, was born 
in Dublin, October, 1789, and having received an ordi- 
nary education in the country, he entered Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, on the fourth of July, 1803, at the age of 
thirteen years and nine months. He was intended for 
the bar, but delicacy of constitution and other causes 
excluded him from this and the other professions, and 
he left college without taking a degree. 

He came to London in 1 824, at the age of thirty-five, 
as a literary adventurer, and his first exploit was aiding 
T. Crofton Croker in compiling the " Fairy Legends of 
the South of Ireland. " He wrote for various reviews, 
especially for the Foreign Quarterly. He published 
Outlines of History, 1829; a History of Rome, 1836; a 
History of Greece, 1835; a History of England, 1839; 
Fairy Mythology, revised edition, 1851; The Mythology 
of Greece and Italy, third edition, 1854; Virgil's Bucolics 
and Georgics, 1846; History of India, 1847; Satires 
and Epistles of Horace, 1848; Ovid, 1848; Sallust, 
1849; a Life of Milton, 1855; the Poems of Milton, 
1859; etc. 



12 HENRY FIELDING 

Mr. Warren in his Law Studies highly commends 
Mr. Keightley's histories, and Doctor Allibone says 
"the works of this author have been praised in other 
quarters also, and by none with more earnestness than 
Mr. Keightley himself, who of course best understands 
their peculiar merits, " and he declares that " the pref- 
ace to his Fairy Mythology, and that to his Life of 
Milton, are certainly among the most curious chapters of 
literary history with which our researches have made us 
acquainted." Here Doctor Allibone refers to Mr. 
Keightley's modest confession that he had " high hopes 
of immortality " for his work, but why condemn Mr. 
Keightley for merely "high hopes" when every author 
knows his next book will be immortal though he says 
it not. 

Thomas Keightley died in Kent on the fourth of 
November, 1872, and here are his hopes of immortality 
realized — embalmed by the Rowfanters. 

In Frasers Magazine for January and February, 
1858, Thomas Keightley contributed an essay On the 
Life and Writings of Henry Fielding, and in the number 
for June following there is a Postscript to Mr. Keightley s 
Articles on Henry Fielding. This essay was written in 
part as a review of Frederick Lawrence's Life of Henry 
Fielding, published in 1855. It is understood that Mr. 
Keightley used in this review material which he had 



Portrait of Fielding 
from bust in Town-Hall, Taunton, England 




ri&ne^^ i €c^.mjc 



(j(<>is'/s - yxc Celt //< 



PREFACE 13 

collected for a Life of Fielding, a project which the ap- 
pearance of Lawrence's book caused him to abandon. 
Be this as it may, Keightley's essay contains much of 
interest and importance on several obscure points in 
Fielding's career, and biographers since his day cannot 
ignore his work. It is odd that this admirable essay 
should never have been reprinted, as it is today to be 
found only in the pages of Frasers Magazine, and the 
task of now reprinting it in suitable garb is very cheer- 
fully assumed by the Rowfant Club. 

The matter contained in the postscript, published 
in the June number of Fraser, is now printed with the 
text of the original article, the paragraphs thus inserted 
being indicated by being enclosed in brackets, and 
some few notes have been added by the editor. 

It is very nearly certain that when Fielding died no 
portrait of him was in existence, and that his friend 
William Hogarth attempted to supply the omission by 
sketching his features from recollection. There is a 
tradition that David Garrick aided in this by " making 
up" and posing for the artist, and on this imaginary 
incident M. de Segur founded his comedy, Le Portrait 
de Fielding, Comedie en un Acte; Paris An. VIII [1800], 
but both Steevens and Ireland, who wrote of the life 
and works of Hogarth, and who had exceptional 
opportunities for knowing, declare that the sketch was 



i 4 HENRY FIELDING 

drawn from memory. This sketch was engraved by 
James Basire for the first edition of Fielding's works, 
published in 1762. In Volume III of Nichols's Literary 
Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, there is a portrait 
of Henry Fielding, published January 1, 1812, engraved 
by Roberts, and said to be "From a Miniature in the 
Possession of his Granddaughter Miss Sophia Fielding." 
This portrait has not to my knowledge ever been re- 
produced with the Hogarth drawing, and the two por- 
traits appear here for the first time in the same volume. 
It seems clear on comparison that the miniature was 
made from Hogarth's sketch. In the town-hall of 
Taunton is a bust of Fielding, unveiled on the fourth 
of September, 1883, on which occasion Mr. James 
Russell Lowell delivered an address. This bust of 
Fielding is also reproduced here, so that we have in 
this volume about all that we can ever know as to the 
appearance of Henry Fielding. 

In the description of the first edition of Tom Jones 
we have reproduced in facsimile the title-pages of both 
the first and second editions, for while variations exist 
they are so slight that mere word descriptions would 
scarce enable one to distinguish one from another. It 
has been thought worth while also to reproduce the leaf 
of errata, in the first volume of the first edition, and also 
the same page when numbered lxiii in the second edition. 



Portrait of Fielding 

from miniature in possession of his granddaughter, 
Miss Sophia Fielding 




Bern in 2 7 C y . died in. J7o4. 



ijfa+m .7s yfutua&izz sn/ /n^-^£y^-^Ut^?zy of 



^cj l^fend&zaiA&ts isfu/. 



M/^n 



#/2*>62s Jscssam 



JV&riaf &y SJKdU, Jc Son. JmSj^iA*. 



PREFACE 15 

The list of biographies of Henry Fielding does not 
pretend to give more than the more important items on 
the subject, together with the minor items contributed 
by authors who have also written matter extensive 
enough to justify inclusion in such a list. 



FREDERICK STOEVER DICKSON 



The Row f ant Club, 
Cleveland, J907. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
HENRY FIELDING, ESQ. 



BY 

THOMAS KEIGHTLEY 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HENRY 
FIELDING, ESQ. 

IN former days the following brief biographic notices 
would perhaps have been termed an Apology; for my 
object is to vindicate the character of Henry Fielding, 
who in my opinion has met with rather hard measure 
from friends as well as from foes. I even take under 
my patronage his two principal heroes, and hope to be 
able to show that they, too, have met with treatment 
which they did not altogether deserve. I have been 
led to it by a perusal of Mr. Lawrence's late work on 
this subject, which not a little disappointed me, as I 
believe it did almost every one else. This is much to 
be regretted, as Mr. Lawrence has shown extreme and 
most laudable diligence in the collection of materials, 
but unfortunately the artistic skill to combine and put 
them to advantage was wanting; for Mr. Lawrence 
does not possess the biographic talent — a talent which 
lies between those of the historian and the novelist, and 
seems in its perfection to be as rare as either of them. 
Accordingly he fails to make the due use of his materials; 
he does not always see what was, as it were, before his 



20 HENRY FIELDING 

eyes, he fails to draw inferences, or draws erroneous 
ones. Add to this a habit of relating circumstances, 
occasionally of importance, without referring to any 
authority. My object, then, is to do what he has left 
undone; from his materials and references to make 
correct statements, and deduce just, or at least probable, 
conclusions, and if possible to represent Henry Fielding 
as he really was. I have given these remarks somewhat 
of the biographic form to keep up a certain degree of 
interest, and I will quote at length the statements of 
others, and then examine them critically. 

As Fielding was of a noble family, it seems necessary 
to say a few words respecting his pedigree. 

With some few exceptions, those genealogies which 
run far back into the middle ages are of a mythic char- 
acter; doubts respecting their accuracy will arise in the 
mind of a cautious inquirer, and the creative art of the 
herald be suspected. Perhaps this may be the charac- 
ter of that of the noble house of Denbigh, though there 
is certainly no violent improbability in the tradition of 
its founder having been a knight of the future Imperial 
House of Hapsburg, who, having lost his possessions in 
his native Germany, sought fortune in England in the 
time of Henry III. 1 Be this, however, as it may, the 
true glory of this house is not its imperial kindred, but 
its counting among its members him of whom I write, 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 21 

whose name seems destined to live as long as Shak- 
speare's — that is, as long as the English language itself. 
To proceed, however: by marriage with sundry English 
heiresses, the family gradually acquired wealth and 
lands; and in 1622, Sir William was created Earl of 
Denbigh, and about two months later, his second son, 
George, Viscount Callan, in Ireland, with succession to 
the earldom of Desmond. This earl's eldest son after- 
wards became Earl of Denbigh on failure of the male 
line in the elder branch. All these particulars, I need 
hardly say, will be found in Sir Bernard Burke's Peerage. 

The name of the family is said to be derived from a 
district named Rhein-filding, belonging to the counts of 
Hapsburg; and it is curious enough that the sons of the 
first earl spelt it differently — the peer spelling it Feild- 
ing; his brother, Henry's grandfather, Fielding. There 
is a story, related as usual by Mr. Lawrence without 
giving any authority, that Lord Denbigh one day asked 
Henry how it was that, being of the one family, they spelt 
their names differently; "I cannot tell, my lord," said 
he, " unless it be that my branch of the family was the 
first that learned to spell." The anecdote is given by 
Kippis, 2 who says he was told it by a person who had it 
from one of Fielding's sons; so it may be true, and have 
come from Sir John Fielding. 

John, the fourth son of the first Earl of Desmond, 



22 HENRY FIELDING 

took holy orders — a very unusual course at that time 
with the sons of the nobility, or even of the gentry. 

Why doth the world scorn that profession 

Whose joys pass speech ? Why do they think unfit 

That Gentry should join f amilie with it ? 

inquires the indignant muse of Dr. Donne; but the rea- 
son is a very simple one. With the Reformation expired 
the rich abbacies and priories, and bishopricks were 
shorn of their wealth and splendour; and though the 
presentation to most livings was in the hands of the 
aristocracy, the imperfect state of agriculture made 
them of small value. There was little then but the rare 
inducement of genuine piety and love of God's name to 
induce the well-born to enter the Church. In the fol- 
lowing century the Church, like every other part of 
society, advanced in wealth, and it then felt no lack of 
gentle blood among its members. 

Before we quit the Fielding family in general, it may 
be as well to mention that a niece of this high-born di- 
vine was married to the Duke of Kingston, and that the 
daughter of this lady was the celebrated Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague, who was thus second cousin to 
Henry Fielding. 

Dr. Fielding, as Nichols, in his History of Leicester- 
shire, informs us, was chaplain to King William, dean 
(archdeacon ?) of Dorset, and a canon of Salisbury 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 23 

Cathedral; he died, I believe, in 1697. By his mar- 
riage with Bridget, daughter of Scipio Cockain, Esq., 
of Somersetshire, he had a numerous family. His 
youngest son, Edmund, born, as we shall see, in 1676, 
entered the army in the reign of King William; but 
neither money nor family influence seems to have done 
much for him at first, for according to Nichols he was 
only a lieutenant when (1706?) he married Sarah, daugh- 
ter of Sir Henry Gould, Knt., of Sharpham Park, near 
Glastonbury, in Somerset, one of the Justices of the 
Court of Common Pleas. And here I cannot refrain 
from making a conjecture. It is well known that Field- 
ing — like Smollet, Goldsmith, and so many others — 
gives in his novels sundry traits of his personal and 
family history. It seems to me, then, not improbable 
that the match may have been a stolen one; and that 
in the nearly secret marriage of Lieutenant Booth with 
Amelia, and the subsequent forgiveness of the young 
couple by her mother, and her taking them to reside 
with her, we may have an adumbration of the marriage 
of Lieutenant Fielding with Sarah Gould, and the for- 
giveness of her father. It is certain that their first child, 
the subject of these pages, was born at Sharpham Park 
on the 22nd of April, 1707; and it is therefore highly 
probable that Mrs. Fielding had hitherto kept house for 
her father, and that she continued to do so, while her 



24 HENRY FIELDING 

husband must have been pretty generally in quarters or 
on service with his regiment; for the War of the Suc- 
cession was at this time at its very height. 

We find, in Warner's History of Glastonbury, that 
Sir Henry Gould died on the 26th of March, 17 10. By 
his will, made in May, 1708 — which is in Doctors' 
Commons, whither none of the biographers have re- 
sorted — he devises to his daughter, Sarah Fielding, the 
sum of £3000, to be held in trust for her and her children 
by his son, William Day Gould, and to be invested in 
college leases or inheritance for her sole use; her hus- 
band, says the will, "to have nothing to do with it," her 
own receipt to be given for interest, &c. 3 Hence we 
may infer that the old judge had but a mean opinion of 
the prudence at least of his military son-in-law, perhaps 
had no great regard for him; and this gives probability 
to the supposition that the match was not much to his 
liking. 

It is probable that this money was laid out at once 
in the purchase of a little property at East Stour, near 
Shaftsbury, in Dorsetshire, for Sarah Fielding was born 
there in the following month of November. If it was, 
as Murphy says, of the value of £200 a year, the pur- 
chase would seem to have been an advantageous one; 
for that was seven per cent, for the money. It is prob- 
able that the land, at least the greater part of it, was let, 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 25 

and that Captain Fielding (as he was then, we may 
suppose) and his family only occupied the house. 

Hutchins gives, in his History of Dorsetshire, from 
the parish register of East Stour, the following particu- 
lars respecting the births and deaths in the Fielding 
family while resident in that parish : — 

Baptisms 
Sarah, daughter of Hon. Edmund Fielding, born Nov. 8, baptized Nov. 23, 1710. 

Anne born June 1, baptized June 22, 1713. 

Beatrice baptized July 29, 1714. 

Edmund, son baptized April 22, 1716. 

Deaths 

Anne, daughter of Hon. Edmund Fielding, August 6, 171 6. 
Sarah, wife, &c April 10, 1718. 

I should suppose that in matters of this nature there 
can be no authority superior to that of a parish register, 
yet Mr. Lawrence, who was acquainted with the work 
of Hutchins, prefers the authority of Murphy, and gives 
the names of the children as follows, and in the following 
order — Catherine, Ursula, Sarah, Beatrice, giving thus 
four instead of three daughters, and making Sarah the 
third, while, I may here observe, on Sarah's monument 
in the Abbey-church in Bath, put up by "her friend," 
Dr. John Hoadly, she is said to have been the "second 
daughter of General Henry Fielding," and her birth is 
placed in 17 14. It may be, however, that a daughter 



26 HENRY FIELDING 

of whom we have no account was born and died at 
Sharpham Park. 

Of these children, Sarah became distinguished as a 
scholar and as an author. She wrote the novel of 'David 
Simple,* and a work named The Cry, and she translated 
Xenophon's Memorabilia from the Greek. Of Beatrice 
we know nothing more. Edmund, Murphy says, en- 
tered the navy, and Mr. Lawrence adds that he died 
young. 

Henry, as we may see, was not quite eleven years old 
when he lost his mother. According to Murphy he had 
hitherto received his literary instruction from the Rev. 
Mr. Oliver (the family chaplain, adds Mr. Lawrence), 
probably the curate of the parish 5 (for East Stour is 
only a curacy), whose adulation of his high-born parish- 
ioner we may observe in the preceding extract. He is 
said by Murphy to have been the original of his pupil's 
"Parson Trulliber," whom he may no doubt have re- 
sembled in person; but I am slow to concede any further 
likeness between him and that vulgar, ignorant, sacerdo- 
tal pig-dealer; for he seems to have qualified his pupil 
for admission to Eton, whither he was sent, probably 
soon after the death of his mother. Here I must remark 
that in this portion of Fielding's history neither Murphy 
nor Mr. Lawrence makes the slightest allusion to East 
Stour, and they leave us to suppose (as I did till I insti- 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 27 

tuted this inquiry) that Sharpham Park was the prop- 
erty and residence of General (?) Fielding. 

At Eton, Fielding was the contemporary' of William 
Pitt, Henry Fox, George (afterwards Lord) Lyttleton, 
Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and Air. Winnington. 
Whether he was intimate or not with the first two we are 
not informed; but the last three, especially Lyttleton, 
were his firm friends through life. He must while at 
Eton have applied himself very closely to his studies, 
for his literary works prove him to have been familiar 
with all the best writers of Greece and Rome; and even 
supposing him not to have read many of them till at a 
later period, the mastery of the classic languages which 
enabled him to do so must have been acquired at Eton. 
He remained there till he was about eighteen, when, 
his destination being the law (probably through his ma- 
ternal connexions), he was, as was then the usage, sent 
to Leyden to attend lectures on the civil law, prepara- 
tory to his study of the law of England. Murphy says 
that while there he studied hard. The place no doubt 
offered little inducement to anything else, but we have 
his own word for it that he sketched at least one comedy 
at this time. After a residence of about two years, 
either the conclusion of his studies, or, as Murphy says, 
the failure of remittances, made him determine on 
returning to England. 



28 HENRY FIELDING 

Fielding reappeared in his native country in 1727. 
He was then twenty years of age, vigorous in both mind 
and body, tall and handsome, endowed with mental 
powers of a high order, but unfortunately very slenderly 
furnished with the gifts of fortune. His father, who 
had married a second time not long after the death of 
his first wife, had agreed, Murphy states, to allow him 
£200 a year; but which, as he adds, Fielding himself 
used to say, "anybody might pay that would;" so he 
had no choice, "as he said himself/' reports his lively 
kinswoman, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, "but to be 
a hackney-writer or a hackney-coachman. " But the 
extract given above from the will of Judge Gould 
throws some doubt on this account. Fielding had really 
no claim on his father, who had nothing whatever to do 
with the East Stour property, and had probably little 
beyond his pay, unless he got a fortune with his second 
wife; and I should suppose that on coming of age he 
could have claimed his share of his mother's fortune. 
This, however, perhaps he did not; and it is possible 
that he let his father receive the rent of East Stour, and 
manfully resolved to battle fortune single-handed; and 
he fixed on the drama as apparently the surest road to 
literary fame and profit. We must not, however, infer, 
as his biographers might lead us to do, that he was at 
once reduced to these straits; for though his first play 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 29 

was brought out soon after his return from Holland, 
there was an interval of full two years between that and 
his second. It would also appear that he was at this time 
in the habit of making visits to his friends or relations 
in the country. Thus, among his Poems there is one 

entitled " A description of U n G (alias Hog's 

Norton), in county Hants, written to a young lady in the 
year 1728." And it is evident that he wrote it from 
that place. 

I may here observe, for the sake of future inquirers, 

that U n G is evidently Upton Grey (of Hog's 

Norton I know nothing), a parish a few miles south-west 
of Odiham. The poem is a humourous description of 
the dilapidated condition of the house in which Fielding 
was residing, with whose owner he was perhaps on a 
visit. As it was probably the only residence, much 
above a mere farm-house, in the parish, it may have 
been Hoddington House (did he form Hog's Norton 
from this ?), and on the site of it have been built the pres- 
ent mansion, the residence of Wm. Lutley Sclater, Esq., 
which Mr. Clarke informs us, in his lately published 
Gazetteer, "is a substantial brick house, erected about 
a century ago." We are also informed that Fielding 
was on terms of intimacy with the father of the Wartons, 
who lived at Basingstoke in that county. 

Another of Fielding's Poems, "Advice to the 



3 o HENRY FIELDING 

Nymphs of New S m," i. e., Salisbury, was written 

in 1730; and to a third, "The Queen of Beauty t'other 
day," belonging to the same place, is appended the fol- 
lowing note — "The middle part of this poem (which 
was writ when the author was very young) was filled 
with the names of several young ladies, etc." From 
all this it is quite clear — and it has never, I believe, 
been observed before — that during the first years after 
his return from Holland, Fielding was not obliged to 
drudge for his daily bread in London. I am strongly 
inclined to think that his father, who must have left 
East Stour before or soon after his marriage, for there 
are no more entries in the parish register, may have 
settled at Salisbury; for there is a constant tradition 
there that Fielding resided at a place named Milford, 
about a mile from that city, and even in it, at the corner 
of the Friary in St. Anne-street. Now as we know that 
it is utterly impossible that Fielding himself could ever 
have had a residence in or near Salisbury, and the tra- 
dition is perhaps not utterly baseless, the probability is 
that his father may have lived in one or in both of those 
places; and that it was when visiting him that Henry 
made the acquaintance of the Misses Craddock and 
other young ladies of Salisbury. I may here observe en 
passant, that my own associations with Salisbury are of 
a most agreeable nature. Having applied for informa- 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 31 

tion on my present subject to one high in the cathedral 
hierarchy, the reply was a most warm invitation to his 
house; and when there, I was introduced to the vener- 
able Canon Greenley, and all others who could assist 
me, which assistance was most cheerfully accorded. 

To this period of Fielding's life may, I think, be 
assigned the following event, unknown to all preceding 
biographers, and first related by Mr. Lawrence, but 
where he got it I am utterly unable to divine; for, more 
suo, he gives no authority or reference. 

On his return from Leyden (he tells us) he conceived a desperate attachment for 
his cousin, Miss Sarah Andrew. The young lady's friends had, however, so little con- 
fidence in her wild kinsman, that they took the precaution of removing her out of his 
reach; not, it is said, until he had attempted an abduction or elopement. . . . His 
cousin was afterwards married to a plain country gentleman, and in that alliance found 
perhaps more solid happiness than she would have experienced in an early and im- 
provident marriage with her gifted kinsman. Her image, however, was never effaced 
from his recollection, and there is a charming picture (so tradition tells) of her luxuriant 
beauty in the portrait of Sophia Western in Tom Jones. 

Mr. Lawrence's work was noticed in the Athenceum 
of Nov. 10th, 1855, and in the very next number of that 
journal appeared the following communication from 
Mr. George Roberts, author of the History of Lyme 
Regis : — 

Henry Fielding was at Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, for the purpose of carrying off 
an heiress, Miss Andrew, the daughter of Solomon Andrew, Esq., the last of a series 
of merchants of that name at Lyme. The young lady was living with Mr. Andrew 
Tucker, one of the Corporation, who sent her away to Modbury in South Devon, where 
she married an ancestor of the present Rev. Mr. Rhodes, of Bath, who possesses the 



32 HENRY FIELDING 

Andrew property. The circumstances about the attempt of Henry Fielding to carry 
off the young lady, handed down in the ancient Tucker family, were doubted by the 
ate Dr. Rhodes, of Shapwick, &c. Since his death, I have found an entry in the old 
archives of Lyme about the fears of Andrew Tucker, Esq., as to his safety, owing to 
the behaviour of Henry Fielding and his attendant or man. According to the tradi- 
tion of the Tucker family, Sophia Western was intended to portray Miss Andrew. 

Here we have certainly a full confirmation of Mr. 
Lawrence's account, with the exception of the relation- 
ship of the parties; and it makes us the more anxious 
to know how he came by it. Mr. Lawrence further 
observes, that "amongst his miscellaneous poems there 
appears an imitation or 'modernization,' as he calls it, 
of the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, which he tells us was 
originally 'sketched out before he was twenty,' and 
'was all the revenge taken by an injured lover.' ' 
He is perhaps correct in his inference that this is the 
circumstance alluded to; but in that case, unless Field- 
ing's memory deceived him, he must have returned 
from Holland a year earlier than is stated by Murphy. 
It would also seem as if he really had some ill-treatment 
on the part of the lady to complain of, for otherwise he, 
who was the most placable of men, would never have 
expressed himself in such terms after the lapse of more 
than a dozen years. The idea of Miss Andrew having 
been the model of Sophia Western must be at once 
rejected, for we know she is the portrait of his adored 
first wife. 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 33 

[Certainly one of the most remarkable of the cir- 
cumstances relating to Fielding which have lately come 
to light, is the attempted abduction of Miss Andrew of 
Lyme Regis. If the allusion, as is most probable, is to 
her in his modernization of Juvenal's Sixth Satire, and 
his memory did not deceive him, Fielding must have 
left Leyden before the end of 1726, and not of 1727, as 
Murphy states; but how could he be so soon after in a 
place so distant from London as Lyme Regis ? Even 
supposing, as Mr. Lawrence asserts, that Miss Andrew 
was his cousin, she was living with a family with which 
he probably had not even an acquaintance. But the 
tradition of Lyme appears to know nothing of this 
relationship, and unless a knowledge of it is preserved 
in the Rhodes family, whence Mr. Lawrence may have 
obtained it, I see no proof of it]. 

[At all events it could hardly have been at Lyme 
that Fielding first met Miss Andrew after his return 
to England; and my hypothesis is, that she was on a 
visit with some friends at Salisbury, which is about sixty 
miles from Lyme, when Fielding first went down to that 
city. He probably made very ardent love to her, and 
she favoured his addresses; a correspondence was of 
course kept up after her return home, and she consented 
to an elopement. Their plan was frustrated, and she 
may, at the desire of her guardian, have written to break 



34 HENRY FIELDING 

off the engagement, and thus have excited the ire of the 
disappointed lover, which would be still greater on the 
supposition of her having given her hand to Mr. Rhodes 
immediately after. Should this hypothesis be the truth, 
it forms one link more of the chain connecting Fielding 
with Salisbury, which city is evidently also the abode 
of Amelia and her family]. 

Fielding's first play, Love in several Masques, 2l regu- 
lar five-act comedy, was brought out in February, 
1727-28. Wilks, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield performed 
in it, and the play had a very fair share of success, 
though coming immediately after the Provoked Husband, 
and though the Beggar s Opera was in full career, mak- 
ing Rich gay and Gay rich. In a modest and rather 
graceful prologue he alludes to this circumstance; and, 
what may to some cause a little surprise, plumes himself 
on the decorum of his scenes, which, he says, are char- 
acterized by 

Humour, still free from an indecent flame, 

Which, should it raise your mirth, must raise your shame. 

Indecency's the bane to ridicule, 

And only charms the libertine or fool. 

Nought shall offend the fair one's ears to-day, 

Which they might blush to hear or blush to say. 

And the claim is tolerably just, for with the exception 
of one scene, there is little to reprehend on the score of 
indecorum. 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 35 

When printing it, he dedicated it to his distinguished 
kinswoman, who had read it in manuscript, and twice 
honoured its representation with her presence. In his 
preface he notices his youth; "for I believe," says he, 
"I may boast that none ever appeared so early on the 
stage." In this, however, he was in error, for though it 
is true he was not yet of age, Wycherley and Farquhar 
had made full as early an appearance, to say nothing of 
Calderon, who wrote his first play before he was four- 
teen years of age. 

His next play, the Temple Beau, was first acted in 
January, 1729-30, and the same year he produced three 
other pieces. Space does not permit me to enter into 
the details of his dramatic career. Let it suffice to 
observe that in the course of five years — 1730-34 — he 
wrote seventeen dramatic pieces; and as only one of 
them proved a total failure, and at a later period he 
speaks 0^50 as a very small result from one of his plays, 
we may fairly infer that each of these pieces, one with 
another, produced him more than that sum. Supposing 
them to have averaged no more than £75, he would have 
received from the theatres during those five years £1200, 
or more than £200 a year — a sum which, had he been 
prudent (which we know he was not), might have sup- 
ported him in independence. But in truth I may be 
much understating his income, for it is very possible 



36 HENRY FIELDING 

that when the bookseller in Joseph Andrews says he 
knew of a hundred guineas being given for a play, the 
allusion may be to one of Fielding's own pieces; for there 
were not, I believe, any of superior merit to his brought 
out during the period of his dramatic career. 

[I doubt if I was justified in supposing that a pub- 
lisher may have given a hundred guineas for a play of 
Fielding's; it is probably some very popular play of an 
earlier period that is meant, such as the Provoked Hus- 
band or the Beggar s Opera. Fielding may have gotten 
for his plays various sums, as £20, £30, and even £50: 
but hardly more]. 

The truth is, during these years Fielding led a life 
of great dissipation. The tavern and the brothel were 
both familiar to him, as he confesses in an anecdote he 
relates in his Amelia', and by the disease of which the 
hero of his Journey from this World to the Next dies, 
and the lady to whom he pays his respects in the City of 
Diseases, he plainly intimates that his constitution had 
been seriously damaged by these early excesses. The 
same personage (z. e. y Fielding himself), at his entrance 
into Elysium, says: — 

I confessed I had indulged myself very freely with wine and women in my 
youth, but had never done an injury to any man living, nor avoided an opportunity 
of doing good; that I pretended to very little virtue more than general philanthropy 
and private friendship — . I was proceeding, when Minos bid me enter the gate, and 
not indulge myself with trumpeting forth my virtues. 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 37 

It has often, also, appeared to me that in these fol- 
lowing words of Heartfort, in the Wedding-Day (volume 
3), Fielding may have had his own case in view: — 

My practice, perhaps, is not equal to my theory, but I pretend to sin with as 
little mischief as I can to others. And this I can lay my hand on my heart and af- 
firm, that I never seduced a young woman to her ruin, nor a married one to the 
misery of her husband. 

It must be confessed that in Fielding's code of mor- 
ality those youthful excesses to which he pleads guilty 
ranked only as venial offences, and he viewed them in 
himself and others with a gentle eye. Neither in his own 
writings nor in Murphy's Essay do we find the slightest 
hint of his ever having been addicted to the fashionable 
vice of gaming. His animal spirits were too high, his 
organ of acquisitiveness too slightly developed, to suffer 
him to waste his time on cards and dice. I may further 
observe that there is nothing in his own works or in 
Murphy's which might lead us to suppose that at this 
or any other period of his life he kept low company; 
there is no knowledge shown by him of the language and 
habits of the lower classes that a gentleman might not 
have obtained without descending from his position. 

The reader must be aware that dress in those days 
was of a far more valuable and expensive nature than 
it is at present; it may be added that the ordinary un- 
dress was of a much coarser kind than anything now 



38 HENRY FIELDING 

worn by any person in decent circumstances. Fielding, 
for example, tells us that Tom Jones when he entered 
London was habited in fustian. As a consequence, with 
imprudent men like our hero, the gaudy plumage was 
often in the hands of the pawnbroker. Mr. Lawrence 
quotes the following lines from a contemporary satire : — 

F g who yesterday appeared so rough, 

Clad in coarse frieze, and plastered down with snuff; 
See how his instant gaudy trappings shine! 
What playhouse bard was ever seen so fine ? 
But this not from his humour flows, you'll say, 
But mere necessity — for last night lay 
In pawn the velvet which he wears to-day. 

Murphy would seem to hint that Fielding received 
pecuniary aid from sundry noble personages. "The 
severity of the public," says he, "and the malice of his 
enemies, met with a noble alleviation from the patron- 
age of the late Duke of Richmond, John, Duke of Argyle, 
the late Duke of Roxborough, and many other persons 
of distinguished rank and character, among whom may 
be numbered the present Lord Lyttleton, etc.;" and 
hence Mr. Lawrence, with one of his customary flights 
of imagination, talks of him "now dining at the tables 
of the great, and quaffing champagne in ducal banquet- 
halls; and now seeking out the cheapest ordinary; or 
if dinner were impossible, solacing himself with a pipe 
of tobacco." 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 39 

In this sketch of mine I shall frequently have to per- 
form the part of the critic rather than of the biographer. 
I must here, then, state that Murphy did not write his 
essay till more than a quarter of a century after this 
period of Fielding's career, and that he is exceedingly 
careless and inexact in his statements. The only one 
of those three dukes with whom we find Fielding at all 
in contact was the Duke of Richmond, to whom he dedi- 
cated his Miser in 1733, and there is nothing in the 
dedication which would lead us to suppose that he was 
personally acquainted with, much less under pecuniary 
obligations to that noble lord. As to Lyttleton he was 
the schoolfellow of Fielding, whose junior he was by 
about a year; and there is certainly no improbability in 
supposing that out of the liberal allowance made him 
by his father — who, by the way, lived nearly as long 
as Fielding himself — he may have occasionally relieved 
the necessities of his well-born but poor and extravagant 
fellow-Etonian. I consider, on the whole, the charge 
made against Fielding, of having taxed the bounty of 
his noble friends in the period from 1728 to 1735, to be, 
in Scottish law-parlance, not proven. It may be true, 
it may be false; we know nothing. 

The spring of 1735 forms an important era in the 
life of Fielding. I must here let Murphy speak, and 
then examine his statements: — 



4 o HENRY FIELDING 

Mr. Fielding (says he, then) had not been long a writer for the stage when he mar- 
ried Miss Craddock, a beauty from Salisbury. About that time, his mother dying, a 
moderate estate at Stour, in Dorsetshire, devolved to him. To that place he retired 
with his wife, on whom he doated, with a resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and 
intemperances to which he had addicted himself in the career of a town life. But un- 
fortunately a kind of family pride here gained an ascendant over him, and he began 
immediately to vie in splendour with the neighbouring country squires. With an estate 
not much above £200 a year, and his wife's fortune, which did not exceed £1500, he 
encumbered himself with a large retinue of servants, all clad in costly yellow liveries. 
For their master's honour, these people could not descend so low as to be careful in 
their apparel, but in a month or two were unfit to be seen; the squire's dignity required 
that they should be new equipped; and his chief pleasure consisting in society and con- 
vivial mirth, hospitality threw open his doors, and in less than three years, entertain- 
ments, hounds, and horses entirely devoured a little patrimony which, had it been man- 
aged with economy, might have secured him an independence for the rest of his life, etc. 

This statement of Murphy when critically examined 
will, if I mistake not, prove to be a mere tissue of error 
and inconsistency. The very opening sentence is incor- 
rect, and likely to lead astray; for " had not been long" 
hardly applies to a period of seven years; and "from 
Salisbury, " would seem to intimate that it was in some 
other place than Salisbury that Fielding met with his 
wife. His mother, as we have seen, died in 1718, when 
he was only eleven years old. The house at East Stour 
(of which an engraving may be seen in Hutchins's 
Dorset) was merely a tolerably respectable farm-house, 
in which it was hardly possible to give splendid entertain- 
ments, or maintain "a large retinue of servants." 
Hutchins, in fact, says that what was the kitchen in his 
time had been Fielding's parlour. And finally, as the 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 41 

Fielding arms are argent and azure, the liveries must 
have been white, not yellow, and the waistcoat and small- 
clothes blue. But above all: instead of three years, 
Fielding was not even one year a resident at East Stour. 
The dedication to the Duke of Marlborough of his 
play of The Universal Gallant, is dated from Bucking- 
ham-street (Strand?), Feb. 12, 1734-35? so that at the 
earliest he could not have been married at Salisbury 
till toward the end of that month (the parish registers of 
Salisbury have been searched in vain for an entry of the 
marriage); and as he was in the spring of the following 
year at the head of a theatrical association in London, 
and must have been there some time previously arrang- 
ing it, we are hardly justified in allowing more than nine 
or ten months for his residence at Stour — a short time 
for running through £1500 and £200 a year! It may 
also be added that a pack of hounds cannot be impro- 
vised, and that the Dorset squires had probably too much 
pride to accept the invitations of one whom they affected 
to despise. As to Murphy's error with respect to the 
length of Fielding's residence, I think it is capable of a 
simple and easy solution, which shall be given in the 
sequel. 

[It may, I think, now be considered that Murphy's 
romance of Fielding's three years' career of extravagance 
in Dorsetshire, his hounds, his horses, his retinue of 



42 HENRY FIELDING 

liveried servants, his open-housekeeping, has been proved 
to be a nearly baseless fiction. But the wonder is, 
that his family let it go uncontradicted. His brother 
John, to be sure, was but a lad at the time, and may 
have known nothing about it; but his sister Sarah was 
then four-and-twenty, and she lived some years after 
the appearance of Murphy's Essay. Yet this incubus 
has lain on Fielding's memory for nearly a century, 
and has mainly contributed to lower his moral char- 
acter. What led me to suppose that he was only nine 
or ten months in the country was the probability that he 
did not give up the house till the 25th of March; he 
may not have encumbered himself with the land. We 
are also to recollect that he had to give his sister her 
share of the income, unless he paid her off out of his 
wife's fortune; which, however, is not very likely]. 

[I must here confess that I was probably in error 
with respect to Fielding's liveries. I had always under- 
stood that it was a maxim in heraldry that the colours 
of the livery should be the same as those of the coat of 
arms, and hence I took it for granted that the Fielding 
liveries must have been white and blue. A lady, how- 
ever, has written to me, informing me that happening 
to dine at Lord Denbigh's, she was much struck by the 
liveries of his servants, which were coat and small- 
clothes of the brightest yellow, with black waistcoat 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 43 

and stockings, silver and black shoulder tags, and silver 
garters. On mentioning this to a friend, he told her 
that the Fieldings kept to those colours to show their 
kindred to the house of Hapsburg. The Austrian col- 
ours, it is well known, are yellow and black. Murphy 
was therefore probably right, and I am bound to apolo- 
gize to his Manes]. 

Murphy is content to blame the folly of the husband, 
but Mr. Lawrence cannot avoid making a similar charge 
against the wife. 

Alas (says he), it is to be feared that from vanity or weakness she abetted him in his 
follies, or at the most confined herself to a timid remonstrance — without venturing on a 
firm expostulation. Poor girl! her fortune was soon dissipated to the winds; run away 
with by horses and hounds; lavished on yellow plush inexpressibles for idle flunkeys; 
banqueted on by foolish squires, or consumed by other senseless extravagancies. Not 
being a strong-minded woman — that is pretty clear — but rather it would seem a 
fond and foolish one, she was dazzled by this brief dream of pride and pleasure; and 
though the future might have worn to her eye a lowering aspect, she was too much grati- 
fied by her husband's popularity, and too proud of his wit and agreeable qualities, 
to check him in his mad career. 

Such is the character which Mr. Lawrence ventures 
to draw of the original of Amelia, and whom Lady Bute, 
who had known her, declared to have possessed all the 
perfections there ascribed to her! 

Let us, abandoning fancy, endeavour to form some 
sober and correct ideas about the marriage and the mar- 
ried life of Fielding. We have seen that he had been for 
many years well acquainted with Salisbury and its in- 



44 HENRY FIELDING 

habitants. Among these were the Misses Craddock, 
three sisters celebrated for their beauty, and apparently 
in independent circumstances, for one of Fielding's 
poems shows that they resided in a house of their own. 
If we are to give credit to the malicious assertion of 
Richardson, they were of illegitimate birth, but of this 
circumstance we have no other proof, and I am able to 
add that the tradition of Salisbury knows nothing of it. 
I learned there that the Craddock family, which is now 
extinct, was highly respectable, though not in the first 
class of Salisbury society. The fortunes of these ladies 
may have been of the amount stated by Murphy. To 
Miss Charlotte Craddock — whom he celebrates in his 
poems, under the name of Caelia — Fielding would 
appear to have been attached for some years, and this 
length of service was probably caused, not by any co- 
quetry on the part of the lady, but by her observation of 
the imprudence of her lover's character, and on his part 
by the want of some fixed and certain source of income. 
This last obstacle, however, seems to have been removed 
in 1735, when his father, who was made a major-general 
this year, may, on this accession to his income, have re- 
signed his first wife's property to her children. It is true 
that Fielding must have been married in the spring, and 
that his father does not seem to have been gazetted till 
the following December; but the gazette may, though 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 45 

not inserted in the Gentleman s Magazine, where we find 
it, till the last month, have contained all the promotions 
of the year; or the general, having a promise from the 
Government, may have thought he could act on it with 
safety. 

In possession of a house and land, and of a good 
sum of ready money, Fielding seems to have resolved 
to make a trial of country life, at least for some time; 
but with his habits and feelings it is hardly possible that 
he could have contemplated a permanent residence. 
We can easily conceive that he lost some money in 
farming; he may have had the temerity he ascribes to 
his Booth, of setting up a carriage, and have kept a 
hunter or two; he may have indulged in hospitality to- 
ward some of his neighbours, and have had friends to 
visit him from Salisbury; but that he should have run 
such a career of reckless extravagance as Murphy lays 
to his charge seems to be almost impossible, if, as I have 
observed, it were only for the size of his house. More- 
over, the whole time of his residence at East Stour could 
hardly, as we have seen, have exceeded nine or ten 
months; for he must have been back again in London 
early in the year 1736, and that not without money, as 
he was able to take the Haymarket Theatre, and engage 
a dramatic company. It is, in fact, not impossible that 
it was the intelligence that that theatre was to be let that 



46 HENRY FIELDING 

drew him so soon from the country, of which by this 
time he may have grown heartily weary. Some time 
before Fielding had left London, his play of Don Quix- 
ote in England had been performed at the Haymarket by 
a volunteer company of actors, and the election scenes 
in it had been applauded. This appears to have led 
the sanguine author to fancy that he could, by his own 
unaided genius, continue for years to derive an income 
from a series of political dramatic satires on the model 
of the celebrated Rehearsal. He therefore took the 
theatre in the Haymarket, collected a corps of actors 
which he named "The Great Mogul's Company of 
Comedians/' and produced a piece named Pasquin: a 
Dramatic Satire on the Times. This was the rehearsal 
of two plays — a comedy, called The Election; and a 
tragedy, called The Life and Death of Common Sense. 
The piece was a bit; its novelty, and the keenness and 
boldness of the satire, recommended it to the public 
taste, and it had a run of fifty nights. We are not in- 
formed what other pieces were performed this year at 
this theatre; but The Fatal Curiosity, by the manager's 
friend, George Lillo, though not very successful, was, 
as Mr. Lawrence tells us, one, and there were probably 
others; at all events the profits of Pasquin must have 
yielded the author sufficient means for living in comfort 
and respectability. In the season of 1737 he brought 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 47 

out a piece of a similar nature, entitled The Historical 
Register for 1736, in which he ventured to introduce 
the Minister of the day, Sir Robert Walpole, a circum- 
stance which led to the passing of the celebrated Licens- 
ing Act, by which it was provided that no dramatic piece 
should be represented without the license of the Lord 
Chamberlain. This of course put an end to Fielding's 
theatric project — a project which, however, must soon 
have failed of itself, as its attraction was its novelty, 
and it was hardly within the limits of human genius to 
be able to yield a constant supply of new and attractive 
political satire. Two or three other dramatic efforts of 
his at this time also had proved failures, and he saw 
clearly that for him to hope to support his family by 
his dramatic talent was preposterous. He accordingly 
resolved to devote himself to the profession for which he 
was originally intended; and toward the close of the 
year, in the thirty-first year of his age, he entered him- 
self as a student in the Middle Temple. Mr. Lawrence 
has given a copy of the record of his admission. It 
runs thus: — 

i° Nov ria 1737. 
Henricus Fielding de East Stour in Com. Dorset Ar: films et haeres apparens Brig. 
Gen hs Edmundi Fielding admissus est in Societat: Medij Templi Lond. specialiter 
et obligatum una cum, etc. 

Et dat pro fine £4. o. o. 

We may here observe that he is denominated of East 



48 HENRY FIELDING 

Stour, which would seem to indicate that he still retained 
his property at that place; and further notice the 
strange circumstance that — as it must have been from 
himself that the information came — he should have 
styled his father only a brigadier-general, when, as we 
have seen, he was made a major-general two years be- 
fore. Perhaps it was only an instance of his want of 
thought. He may have been in the habit of calling his 
father the Brigadier, and it may have slipt from him on 
this occasion. 

Of Fielding's career as a law-student, Murphy gives 
the following account, which is probably in the main 
correct: — 

His application while he was a student in the Temple was remarkably intense; 
and though it happened that the early taste he had taken of pleasure would occasionally 
return upon him, and conspire with his spirit and vivacity to carry him into the wild 
enjoyments of the town, yet it was particular in him, that amidst all his dissipations, 
nothing could suppress the thirst he had for knowledge and the delight he felt in read- 
ing; and this prevailed in him to such a degree, that he has been frequently known by 
his intimates to return late at night from a tavern to his chambers, and there read and 
make extracts from the most abstruse authors, for several hours before he went to bed, 
so powerful were the vigour of his constitution and the activity of his mind. 

This, it may be seen, is written with Murphy's usual 
vagueness and inaccuracy. Fielding could have had no 
chambers while a student; and from the manner in 
which his reading is spoken of, it would seem that his 
midnight studies were devoted rather to writers like 
Plato and Aristotle, than to Littleton, Coke, and the 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 49 

other sages of the law. It is, however, agreed on all 
hands that he acquired a competent knowledge of law, 
and that he entered Westminster Hall with as large a 
stock of that knowledge as most of his contemporaries, 
when he was called to the bar on the 20th of June, 1740, 
and, as Mr. Lawrence informs us, chambers were as- 
signed him in Pump Court. 

We thus see that Fielding was engaged in the study 
of the law for a period of two years and a half, and the 
question is, how did he purchase the necessary books 
and support his family all that time ? There was then 
no reporting for newspapers, writing articles for reviews 
and magazines, and the other modes by which law- 
students of the present day are able to support them- 
selves. He may have written an occasional pamphlet 
of which no notice has reached us; but it was not till the 
close of the year 1739 that he started a periodical paper, 
named the Champion, in imitation of the Tatler and the 
Spectator, and from which, as it proved tolerably suc- 
cessful, he derived some income during the last six 
months of his probationary period. I must confess that 
I can see no other way in which he could have lived than 
on the remains of his own and his wife's property, and 
I would conjecture that it was at this time that he dis- 
posed of his interest in the house and lands at East 
Stour, in which case, however, he must have given his 



50 HENRY FIELDING 

sister Sarah her fair proportion. And here I will intro- 
duce the promised explanation of Murphy's error re- 
specting the length of his residence there. Murphy, who 
we have reason to think was personally acquainted with 
Fielding, may have heard him say that he had only had 
that property in his possession for the space of three 
years, and he may have hastily inferred that he had been 
residing there all that time. Possibly his motive for com- 
mencing the Champion was the drying up of that source 
of supply. We are further to recollect that the winter 
of 1739-40, long known by the name of the hard frost, 
was one of unparalleled severity, and that the conse- 
quent dearness of provisions must have taxed the ener- 
gies of persons of slender means like Fielding. The 
success of the Champion at such a time, Mr. Lawrence 
regards as a proof of its merits; and it may be so, but at 
the same time we must recollect that the purchasers of 
such a paper are persons who would not be withheld by 
a rise in the price of bread and coals from indulging 
their inclination for amusement or instruction. 

On being called to the bar, Fielding withdrew from 
the editorship of the Champion; but he continued to be 
an occasional contributor to it for a twelvemonth longer, 
after which time the paper appears to have ceased to 
exist. I may here observe, en passant, that at this pe- 
riod Fielding lost his father, who died in May, 1 741, aged 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 51 

sixty-five, having just lived to see his son a member of 
an honourable profession. He had himself, as the 
Gentleman s Magazine informs us, attained the rank of 
lieutenant-general, and was a colonel of invalids. His 
death brought his eldest son no increase of income. 

Fielding went the Western Circuit, of course, it being 
the one on which his connexions lay; he also for the 
same reason attended the Wiltshire Sessions, and we 
have no reason to suppose that he did not get at least 
some share of business in both; we can hardly doubt of 
his having had friends among the Salisbury attorneys 
at least. During term time, as Murphy assures us, he 
was most assiduous in his attendance at Westminster 
Hall; and I see no improbability in the supposition that 
by his labours at the bar he might have been able to 
have lived in comfort and independence had he not, 
probably in consequence of his early excesses, become 
at this time a victim to the gout, which often confined 
him to his bedroom when he should have been at cham- 
bers or in court. It was this probably that made him 
devote himself once more to literature. In February, 
1742, he gave to the world Joseph Andrews, the first of 
his imperishable novels. Of this, along with his other 
works, I shall give an account in the sequel. The fol- 
lowing April he published, but anonymously, a pam- 
phlet in defence of Old Sarah, as she was called, the 



52 HENRY FIELDING 

Dowager-Duchess of Marlborough, for which we can 
hardly doubt he was paid by her Grace. The next 
month he produced on the stage a ballad-farce, named 
Miss Lucy in Town, in which he says "he had but a 
small share," but without telling who was the coadjutor. 
Possibly it was Ralph, who had been joined with him 
in the Champion. The seventh night of its performance 
was the author's benefit, after which it was prohibited 
by the Lord Chamberlain, because a particular person 
of quality was supposed to be aimed at in the character 
of Lord Bawble, which, however, Fielding indignantly 
denied in a pamphlet which he published on the subject. 
Some time in this year we find he was at Bath — for in 
his Miscellanies there is a copy of verses "To Miss H — 
and at Bath, written extempore in the pump-room, 
1742." He was therefore either there for his health, or 
went circuit this year. 

The winter of 1742-43 was a season of distress to 
poor Fielding. Speaking of it in the preface to his 
Miscellanies, he says — "While I was last winter laid 
up with the gout, with a favourite child dying in one 
bed, and my wife in a condition very little better on 
another, attended with other circumstances which served 
as very proper decorations to such a scene. " By 
these circumstances he doubtless meant pecuniary em- 
barrassments, and the child, a daughter, as we shall see, 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 53 

died, for he meets her in Elvsium in his 'Journey to the 
Next World, published the following year. 

While he was in this condition he was applied to bv 
his friend Garrick for a play. He had two lving by him, 
the Wedding-Day, the third play, he says, that he had 
written, and another, which he intended to call The 
Good-natured Man, both unfinished. The latter was the 
one he intended to give, but finding that it would require 
a good deal of labour, and that the part intended for 
Garrick was not a very important one, the time, more- 
over, being very short, he did what he could to the 
Wedding-Day, and it was produced on the 17th Feb- 
ruary, 1743. But though supported by the talents of 
Garrick and Macklin, and Mesdames Pritchard and 
Woffington, it had very poor success, being performed 
but six nights, and yielding the author only £50. The 
public taste, in fact, was altering for the better, and the 
want of decorum and propriety belonging to the school 
of YVvcherlev and Congreve, which it displayed, could 
no longer claim toleration, much less applause. Mur- 
phy gives the following anecdote relating to the first 
performance of this piece: — 

An actor who was principally concerned in the piece, and, though young, was then, 
bv the advantage of happy requisites, an early favourite of the public, told Mr. Fielding 
he was apprehensive that the audience would make free with him in a particular pas- 
sage, adding that a repulse might so flurry his spirits as to disconcert him for the rest 
of the night, and therefore begged that it might be omitted. "No, d-mn "em," replied 



54 HENRY FIELDING 

the bard, "if the scene is not a good one let them find that out." Accordingly the play 
was brought on without alteration, and just as had been foreseen, the disapprobation 
of the house was provoked at the passage before objected to; and the performer, 
alarmed and uneasy at the hisses he had met with, retired into the green-room, where 
the author was indulging his genius, and solacing himself with a bottle of champagne. 
He had by this time drank pretty plentifully; and cocking his eye at the actor, with 
streams of tobacco trickling down from the corner of his mouth, "What's the matter, 
Garrick ?" says he; "what are they hissing now?" "Why, the scene that I begged 
you to re-touch; I knew it would not do; and they have so frightened me that I shall 
not be able to collect myself again the whole night." "Oh! d-mn 'em," replies the 
author, "they have found it out, have they?" 

Of the main truth of this anecdote there can be no 
doubt, as Murphy's Essay was published during the 
lifetime of Garrick, who must have read it, but it is 
embellished after the writer's usual manner. How, for 
instance, could tobacco run from a man's mouth ? and 
if he meant tobacco-juice, that could only be in conse- 
quence of chewing, and how a man could chew tobacco 
and drink wine at the same time it is not easy to see; 
further, champagne is not exactly a wine that a man 
would sit over. It may seem unfeeling in Fielding to 
have been thus indulging, with a wife on a sick-bed and 
a favourite child either dying or dead; but the presence 
of the author was requisite at the theatre, and the wine 
and the pipe were probably no more than a resource 
against the affliction and melancholy that were pressing 
on his mind. Necessity is stern. How often has the 
actor or actress, under her rigid command, convulsed 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 55 

an audience with laughter, while their heart was burst- 
ing with grief! 

During the spring or summer of this year, Fielding 
published by subscription his Miscellanies, in three 
volumes, containing his Verses, "Miss Lucy in Town," 
"The Wedding-Day," "The Journey from this World 
to the Next," " Jonathan Wild," and some short pieces 
in prose. His legal brethren subscribed numerously, 
and the work seems to have reached a second edition 
the same year. It is very remarkable that the volumes 
appear to have gone out of existence. Even in the 
British Museum there is only an odd first volume of 
the second edition in the King's Library. 6 

Some time in the course of this year, perhaps in the 
autumn, Fielding met with the greatest calamity that 
ever befell him — the loss of that beautiful, amiable, 
and affectionate woman, the companion and soother 
of all his cares, afflictions, and misfortunes, the model 
from whom he formed his delightful Sophia and Amelia. 
She had been for some time in a bad state of health, and 
now was attacked by a fever which carried her off. It 
tasked all the mental vigour and philosophy of the be- 
reaved husband to bear the shock of this overwhelming 
affliction, which, we are assured, well nigh deprived 
him of reason. 

Murphy gives us no account of this estimable woman, 



56 HENRY FIELDING 

and all that was known of her till of late years, was that, 
as Fielding himself tells us, he had her in view when 
drawing his Sophia Western, and the generally known 
fact that she was the original of his Amelia. " Henry 
Fielding," says Lady Mary W. Montague, in one of 
her letters, "has given a true picture of himself and his 
first wife, in the character of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some 
compliments to his own figure excepted; and I am 
persuaded several of the incidents he mentions are real 
matters of fact." Richardson also, in one of his letters, 
writes, "Amelia, even to her noselessness, is again his 
first wife." But the biographers in general seem to 
have overlooked the following passage in Fielding's 
own essay Of the Remedy of Afflictions for the Loss of 
our Friends, in which she is evidently the person alluded 
to, — "I remember the most excellent of women and 
tenderest of mothers, when, after a painful and danger- 
ous delivery, she was told she had a daughter, answering 
'Good God! have I produced a creature who is to 
undergo what I have suffered ?' Some years after- 
wards I heard the same woman, on the death of that 
very child, then one of the loveliest creatures ever seen, 
comforting herself with reflecting that 'her child 
would never know what it was to feel such a loss as 
she then lamented/ " 

At length, in the present century, the late Lord 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 57 

Wharncliffe was able, from the account of his grand- 
mother, Lady Bute, to give us information respecting 
Fielding and his affairs of which the world had pre- 
viously been in ignorance. Of Mrs. Fielding he says : — 

Only those persons are mentioned here of whom Lady Bute could speak from 
her own recollection or her mother's report. Both had made her well informed of every 
particular that concerned her relation, Henry Fielding, nor was she a stranger to that 
beloved first wife whose picture he drew in his Amelia, where, as she said, even the 
glowing language he knew how to employ did not do more than justice to the amiable 
qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the 
accident related in the novel — a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her 
nose. He loved her passionately, and she returned his affection; yet led no happy 
life, for they were almost always miserably poor, and seldom in a state of quiet and 
safety. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort, some- 
times in a wretched garret without necessaries, not to speak of the spunging-houses 
and hiding-places where he was occasionally to be found. His elastic gaiety of mind 
carried him through it all, but meanwhile care and anxiety were preying upon her 
more delicate mind and undermining her constitution. She gradually declined, caught 
a fever, and died in his arms. 

The statement here made requires examination. Lord 
Wharncliffe, as we see, derived his information from 
his grandmother, Lady Bute, the daughter of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague, and to whom, in imitation perhaps 
of Mme. de Sevigne, most of her letters are addressed. 
Lady Bute died in 1794, at an advanced age, when 
Lord Wharncliffe was only eighteen years old. Being 
probably a youth of an inquiring disposition, it is likely 
that he had his information directly from his grand- 
mother, and there seems no reason to suppose that he 



58 HENRY FIELDING 

has not accurately related what he heard. But as this 
could hardly have been till the last two or three years 
of Lady Bute's life, and she was speaking of things that 
occurred more than half a century before; and as, from 
the difference of their social stations, her intimacy could 
scarcely have been very great with her less fortunate 
cousins, we may not unreasonably suspect some error 
and exaggeration in the foregoing account. In a word, 
I doubt if Fielding was ever in the abject poverty he is 
here represented in. I have shown that he could not 
have been very poor for the first two years after his 
return to London; for more than two more he was 
engaged in the study of the law, which hardly was com- 
patible with living in a garret and skulking in out-o'-the- 
way retreats; for the remainder of his wife's lifetime he 
was a practising barrister and going circuit, which, 
again, is incompatible with abject poverty. Add to this 
that the account presently to be noticed, which Lord 
Wharncliffe gives of the strong attachment of their maid- 
servant to her mistress, tends to prove that she had been 
living with them for some time, perhaps for some years. 
In fact, I doubt if the whole account of Fielding's pov- 
erty and distresses does not rest on the following passage 
in one of Lady Mary's letters to Lady Bute, and 
which possibly was Lord Wharncliffe's sole authority. 
"His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook- 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 59 

maid and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret ;" 
of which the former circumstance will be explained in 
the sequel, and the latter, as we shall see, can only refer 
to the lifetime of his first wife. In reading it, we should 
recollect Lady Mary's love of point, and the tendency of 
women in general to exaggeration. On the whole, I 
think that Mrs. Fielding's distress may not at any time 
have been much greater than that of Amelia, who had 
to cook her own dinner, having only a little girl for a ser- 
vant; and who was under the necessity of taking her 
ornaments and even her clothes to the pawnbroker's, 
and of seeking her imprudent husband in a spunging- 
house. I cannot believe she ever was reduced to live 
in a garret. 

We have no means of ascertaining what children 
Fielding had by this admirable woman. One daughter, 
as we have seen, died just before herself; another we 
know survived her, and we hear of no other children. 
Booth and Amelia are, however, represented as having 
a son and a daughter; and in his dream in the True 
Patriot (1745), Fielding describes himself as having a 
son and a daughter. He may therefore have had a son 
whom he outlived. 

For a period of two years after the death of his wife, 
we have hardly any account of the occupations of Field- 
ing. From a preface which he prefixed in 1744 to the 



60 HENRY FIELDING 

second edition of his sister Sarah's novel of David Sim- 
ple, it would appear that he was then applying himself 
vigorously to his profession, while we have indubitable 
evidence that at some period or other he was residing near 
Bath; and this, as we shall see, could only have been in 
some part of these two years. It is not, then, at all 
improbable, that as his infirmities increased on him he 
was ordered to Bath for the benefit of the waters. I 
found this opinion on the following circumstance: — 

The Rev. Mr. Graves, author of The Spiritual 
Quixote, and other works, who was appointed in 1750 
to the rectory of Claverton, near Prior-park, the seat of 
Ralph Allen, gave the world anecdotes of that excellent 
man, who (let me add here, by way of parenthesis, what 
is not generally known) commenced his career, as Mr. 
Greenley informed me, as a mere letter-carrier between 
Bath and Marlborough, from which humble occupation 
he gradually rose through his own industry, honesty, 
and talent to be the noble-minded and generous master 
of Prior-park. In that work Mr. Graves informs us 
that Fielding, who was residing at Tiverton, near Bath, 
used to dine almost every day at Prior-park. I am 
inclined to think that this was the period when Fielding's 
fortune was at the lowest ebb. He was certainly now 
engaged on his Tom Jones; and in the dedication of 
that work to his friend Lyttleton he says, " I partly owe 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 61 

to you my Existence during great Part of the Time which 
I have employed in composing it." It is quite plain, 
then, that Lyttleton gave him pecuniary aid; and he did 
more, for he induced the Duke of Bedford, whose liber- 
ality was not in general very conspicuous, to give him 
what in the same place Fielding terms "princely bene- 
factions;" and there can hardly be a doubt but that the 
good Allen did not confine his generosity to the mere 
giving him his dinner. Indeed, from the manner in 
which Fielding speaks of him in Joseph Andrews, in 
1742, it is plain that even then he was intimate with him, 
and possibly had tasted of his hospitality, if not of his 
bounty. The handsome compliment, also, which he 
pays Warburton, in the Journey to the Next World, on 
his fanciful exposition of the Sixth Book of the Mneid, 
might seem to intimate a personal acquaintance, formed 
most probably at Prior-park, to which place there is 
also an allusion in that piece. We have not the means 
of ascertaining whether Fielding had his family with 
him at Tiverton or not, though it would seem most 
probable that he had, neither do we know how long he 
remained there. As, however, there does not seem to be 
any reason for his return to London, his abode at Tiver- 
ton may have continued till the autumn of 1745. 

[Twiverton, not Tiverton (in which I incautiously 
followed Mr. Lawrence), is the proper orthography of 



62 HENRY FIELDING 

the name of the village popularly called Tiverton. For 
this correction I am indebted to the mayor of Bath (Dr. 
Wilbraham Falconer), who has also informed me that 
the house in which Fielding lived is still in existence]. 
We may probably also infer that his gout could not 
have been very severe at that time; for beside walking, 
as we must suppose, every day to the pump-room in 
Bath, and perhaps back again, his daily visit to Prior- 
park must have obliged him to go over a good deal of 
ground, as the distance between that and Tiverton is 
not inconsiderable. There is also, as I shall show when 
I come to the examination of Tom Jones, some reason 
to suppose that at this time, as well as at some earlier 
periods, Fielding may have gone from Bath to Hagley 
Park, on a visit to his friend Lyttleton. 

I fix upon the above date because Fielding was 
certainly in London previous to the month of November 
in that year. The Pretender had gained the victory at 
Preston Pans, and was now in England; and it probably 
occurred to Lyttleton, who was a member of the Govern- 
ment, what good service Addison had, on a somewhat 
similar occasion, done to his country by the publication 
of his Freeholder, and he may have thought that a series 
of essays of the same kind might be of essential service 
at the present conjuncture, and he may have proposed 
it to Fielding, who had already distinguished himself 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 63 

as an essayist in the Champion; or the idea may have 
originated with Fielding himself, and have been ap- 
proved of by Lyttleton and some of the other members 
of the Government. The paper was written with great 
spirit, and a true love of rational liberty; for the writer, 
who was no mere mercenary hireling, threw his whole 
soul into it; and there can be little doubt that it was of 
use to the cause of the House of Brunswick. It is there- 
fore not unlikely that he received a promise from the 
Government that something would be done for him. 
In fact, as he tells us, in his Voyage to Lisbon, that he 
had a pension — of which he gives neither the date nor 
the amount, and for an account of which I have sought 
in vain in the Record Office — it may have been granted 
on the suppression of the Rebellion in 1746. Under 
these circumstances, and feeling the increase of his in- 
firmities, he seems to have thought that he might not 
imprudently unite himself (for the second time) in mar- 
riage, with one who he knew would prove a tender nurse 
and an affectionate friend. Lord Wharncliffe thus 
expresses himself on the subject: — 

His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that after the death of this 
charming woman he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to 
his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excel- 
lent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her 
loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no 
relief but from weeping along with her — no solace, when a degree calmer, but in talk- 



64 HENRY FIELDING 

i ng to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confidential 
associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give his children a 
tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. At 
least, this was what he told his friends; and it is certain that her conduct as his wife 
confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion. 

In what is here said of Fielding's biographers there 
is an error, for none of them, except it may be Murphy, 
seems to have known anything about his second wife. 
Murphy was probably acquainted with her, for he says 
that he printed Amelia "from a copy corrected by the 
author's own hand;" and it is not unlikely that it was 
from his widow that he obtained it, as well as some of the 
materials of his scanty biography, and respect and grati- 
tude would then restrain him from mentioning a circum- 
stance of which he could hardly be ignorant, but which 
might tend to lower her in the estimation of the world. 
Still, I will not assert positively that Murphy was thus 
indebted to Mrs. Fielding, for his authority may have 
been John Fielding. The later biographers then, had 
nothing to guide them but Lady Mary W. Montague's 
saying, that "his natural spirits gave him rapture 
with his cook-maid," which one of them professes he 
could not understand. There is also in the following 
passages of the first edition of Peregrine Pickle — to 
which Sir Walter Scott has directed attention, and 
which Mr. Lawrence has, a I 'ordinaire, quoted silently 
— an evident allusion to Fielding's marriage; but as 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 65 

the author very properly cancelled it in the subsequent 
editions, it is probable that few of them ever saw it. In 
his coarse attack on Lord Lyttleton, under the name of 
Gosling Scrag, he says, "I advise Mr. Spondy to give 
him the refusal of this same pastoral. Who knows 
but he may have the good fortune of being listed in the 
number of his beef-eaters ? in which case he may, in 
process of time, be provided for in the Customs or the 
Church. When he is inclined to marry his own cook- 
wench, his gracious patron may condescend to give the 
bride away; and may finally settle him, in his old age, 
as a trading Westminster justice. " The allusion here 
to Fielding is not to be mistaken, and what is a matter 
of some importance, we learn from it that his marriage 
must have met with the entire approbation of his vir- 
tuous friend and patron. 

The name of this excellent woman was Mary Mac- 
donnell, Macdonald, or Macdaniel, as it is variously 
spelt, and she was probably of Scotch extraction. She 
bore him four children, and survived him nearly half 
a century, as she died at Canterbury on the 1 ith March, 
1802. The marriage seems to have taken place in the 
spring of 1746, for their first child was baptized at 
Twickenham, February 25th, 1747. 

[It does not seem to be quite certain that Fielding 
was married in 1746. I inferred it from the baptism 



66 HENRY FIELDING 

of his first son in February, 1747; but the style was 
not changed till 1752, so that February, 1747, would 
really belong to 1748. Nichols, however, I think, made, 
as is usual, the requisite reduction, and 1746 is prob- 
ably the right year of Fielding's marriage. If so, the 
lodgings in which Warton spent the evening may have 
been Miss Fielding's (who had evidently an independ- 
ent income), and Henry may have only had a bed- 
room in the same house; if he was not married till 
the next year, the brother and sister may have been 
living together]. 

Mr. Lawrence also quotes the following lines from 
a poem, "On Felix married to a Cook-maid," in the 
Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1746, which may refer 
to Fielding: 

Felix, who once an ode could write 

To a victorious duke, 
Must needs in humble strains endite 

Love-sonnets to a cook. 
* * * 
Marriage his wit may check — to show it 

Before he was too eager, 
Now better qualified for poet 

Since he became a beggar. 

This, as I have said, may refer to Fielding, with 
whose name the initial letter and the number of the sylla- 
bles in Felix correspond; but we have no account of his 
ever having written an ode to the Duke of Cumberland, 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 67 

though one may have been ascribed to him. The term 
beggar might refer to his receiving benefactions from 
his friends. The whole theory, however, seems to be 
upset by the second stanza, which Mr. Lawrence has 
omitted, for Felix is there called "a rebel," and it is 
added that "the heroine was Bess;" while, as we have 
seen, the name of Fielding's wife was Mary. Felix 
may, then, have been a Jacobite who addressed an ode 
to the Duke of Cumberland, upbraiding him with his 
atrocities in Scotland. Mr. Lawrence, when showing 
from a poem by Walpole that Fielding had resided at 
Twickenham, says, "with respect to the period, ... it 
is not in our power to afford any accurate information," 
and he supposes it must have been while he was a mag- 
istrate. But we may now see that as his eldest son was 
born there, it is probable that he took up his residence 
at Twickenham before or soon after his marriage. At 
the same time he probably had a residence of some kind 
in London, for J. Warton, writing to his brother on the 
29th October, 1746, says: — 

I wish you had been with me last week when I spent two evenings with Fielding 
and his sister, who wrote David Simple: and you may guess I was very well enter- 
tained. The lady, indeed, retired pretty soon, but Russell and I sat up with the poet 
till one or two in the morning, and were inexpressibly diverted. I find he values, as 
he justly may, his Joseph Andrews above all his writings. He was extremely civil to 
me, I fancy on my father's account. 

We thus see that while Fielding had a residence for 



68 HENRY FIELDING 

his wife at Twickenham (for it is quite plain she could 
not have been with him on this occasion), he must have 
had at least lodgings in London, where his sister appar- 
ently kept house for him. We also seem here to find 
a confirmation of his intimacy with Hampshire, for the 
Wartons' father lived near Basingstoke, in that county. 
It is rather strange to find him called the poet; but this 
may be on account of the poems in his Miscellanies, or 
rather Warton uses the word as synonymous with a 
writer of works of imagination, and may have had 
Joseph Andrews chiefly in view, which work Fielding 
himself, in the preface, styles a poem; and Sir Walter 
Scott observes, that "every successful novelist must be 
more or less of a poet, even although he may never have 
written a line of verse. " 

The True Patriot ceased when the rebellion had been 
completely put down; and we are not informed how 
Fielding occupied himself till toward the end of 1747, 
when, in the month of December, he commenced an- 
other paper, called the Jacobite Journal, of which the 
object was to cover with ridicule and hold up to general 
contempt the principles and members of the beaten 
party, and thus, as it were, tread out the embers of the 
late conflagration. It was published once a week, and 
was continued till November, 1748, when it ceased, 
probably in consequence of its writer being appointed 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 69 

a magistrate for Westminster, which was the only 
reward for his public services that his friend Lyttleton 
was able to obtain for him from a Government that was 
lavishing its favours on persons of infinitely inferior 
powers and pretentions. 

Murphy, with his usual inaccuracy, says he was 
made " an acting magistrate in the commission of the 
peace for Middlesex ," and he has been followed by all 
the other biographers. The publication, however, of 
the Correspondence of John Duke of Bedford, enables 
us to correct this error. We there meet with a letter 
from Fielding to the Duke, dated Bow-street, December 
13th, 1748, in which he speaks of himself as in the com- 
mission for Westminster, but adds that the profits of 
that office would be quite trifling unless he were in the 
commission for Middlesex also. But as for this a prop- 
erty qualification was requisite, he asks the Duke to let 
him have a twenty-one year lease of a house in Bedford- 
street, worth £70 a year, but which it would take £300 
to put in repair, and of some other house worth £30 a 
year, and to let him pay the money in two years in half- 
yearly payments. It would appear that the Duke 
assented, for Fielding became a magistrate for Middle- 
sex. 

Fielding had been only three months in office when 
he gave the world to know how his leisure hours for the 



7 o HENRY FIELDING 

last few years had been employed, by publishing his 
immortal novel of Tom Jones, of which the reception 
was most enthusiastic. 

In a letter to George Montague, dated May 18th, 
1749, the flippant, cold-hearted, malignant Horace 
Walpole writes as follows: — 

Rigby gave me as strong a picture of nature [as a scene of low-life in Holborn]. 
He and Peter Bathurst, t'other night carried a servant of the latter 's, who had attempted 
to shoot him, before Fielding; who, to all his other vocations, has, by the grace of Mr. 
Lyttleton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them word he was at supper, 
they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, 
when they found him banqueting with a blind man, a whore, and three Irishmen, on 
some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never 
stirred nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him so often come to beg a guinea 
of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had lived for victuals, understood 
that dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs; on which he civilized. 

A piece of more concentrated venom than this it 
would be difficult to discover. The idea meant to be 
conveyed was, that Fielding the magistrate entertained 
in his official residence some of the lowest and most 
debased characters that Covent-garden and Drury-lane 
could supply; for one is led to suppose that the blind 
man was a beggar, and the Irishmen, chairmen, coster- 
mongers, or something worse. Now the truth is, the 
blind man was Fielding's younger brother, John, who 
succeeded him in his office; the whore was his wife, 
whose appearance was probably not very ladylike; and 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 71 

the Irishmen, of whom Murphy was possiblv one., were 
law-students, or men who lived bv their pen, to whom 
he was alwavs kind and generous; the table-cloth was 
probablv merely a soiled one, and surely there was 
nothing so yen* extraordinary in two kinds of cold meat 
being placed in the one dish. Fielding no doubt did 
receive loans or gifts of money from his friend and 
schoolfellow, Sir Charles Williams, as he did from 
Lvttleton and Allen, and Rigbv may have been present 
on one or more of these occasions; but his ever having 
"lived for his victuals" at Bathurst's father's, seems 
utterly inconsistent with what we have seen of his life, 
and perhaps resolves itself into his having been frequent- 
ly invited to dine there, a thing easily accounted for if 
his father was Lord Bathurst, the friend of Pope and 
Swift. Mr. Rigbv's character is pretty well known 
from Junius and other sources, and he, at least, was 
not the equal of Fielding in birth. At all events they 
acted like a pair of scoundrels, and the malignant frib- 
ble who retails their fictions, and probably exaggerates 
them, was not sorry to meet with an opportunity for 
venting his spleen on a man whom his Tom Jones had 
recently covered with a literary glory to which he could 
never hope to attain. Perhaps, too, he knew who was 
meant bv lonathan \Yild. 7 

[I think the conjecture of Murphy's forming one of 



72 HENRY FIELDING 

the supper-party is confirmed by the circumstance of 
such being the name of the Salisbury attorney in Amelia, 
which was commenced in that or the following year. 
This name was probably adopted by way of a joke on the 
young Irish law-student, for no name is more thoroughly 
Irish than Murphy; and I doubt if even in the present 
day any respectable person bearing it could be found 
in any town in the south of England]. 

As a magistrate, Fielding was most active and ex- 
emplary in the discharge of his duties. On the 12th of 
May — just a week, by the way, previous to the date of 
Walpole's letter — he was unanimously elected by the 
Middlesex magistrates as chairman of the sessions at 
Hicks' Hall, "in the room," the newspaper states, "of 
Thomas Lane, Esq., now one of the Masters in Chan- 
cery;' ' so that it was no small compliment to his legal 
knowledge. On the 29th of June he delivered there the 
excellent charge which is printed in his works. Toward 
the close of this year he had so severe an attack of fever 
and gout that his life was thought to be in danger. The 
year 1750 was a busy year with him in his office, rob- 
beries having increased in a most awful manner. In 
January, 1751, he gave the world the results of his ex- 
perience in a pamphlet, named An Inquiry into the 
Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, &c, dedicated 
to the Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, by whom, and by 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 73 

several other eminent lawyers, it was highly estimated. 
The late Sir James Macintosh, it may be recollected, 
quoted it with approbation in Parliament. 

All this time Fielding was devoting his few leisure 
hours to the composition of another novel, the apotheosis, 
as it may be termed, of his adored first wife. Amelia 
was published at the end of this year. An able review- 
er of Mr. Lawrence's work wonders that the composi- 
tion of it did not break Fielding's heart. But had he 
any pangs of remorse to endure ? I doubt it much. 
We have no reason whatever to suppose that he had 
ever been unfaithful to her; unkind he certainly never 
was. He no doubt had to think on many an act of 
imprudence which must have caused her pain, and 
have gone over many a scene of distress endured in 
common, her conduct in which made her memory rise 
more lovely to his eyes. But I would almost venture 
to affirm that his predominant feeling during the com- 
position of this work was what the Portuguese express 
by their untranslatable word saudade, or what the 
French term douce melancolie, in which pleasure and 
pain are mingled in nearly equal quantities. 

Hardly had Amelia been out of his hands when the 
active mind of its author, in spite of gout and profession- 
al occupation, was again engaged in literature. On 
the 4th January, 1752, appeared the first number of 



74 HENRY FIELDING 

The Covent Garden Journal, of which Fielding was the 
editor, and in a great measure the writer. It came out 
twice or thrice a week, and was continued to the end 
of the year, when the state of his health and the press of 
business obliged him to give it up. Arthur Murphy then 
started the Grays Inn Journal, of a similar character, 
which tends to confirm the fact of his intimacy with 
Fielding, already alluded to. Chalmers, in fact, in a 
note on Murphy's Essay on Fielding, says "Mr. Mur- 
phy's copy of this work (The Covent Garden Journal) 
is now in my possession. I strongly suspect he com- 
municated some article to it." 

In January, 1753, Fielding published a Proposal 
for making an effectual Provision for the Poor, &c. 
The case of that celebrated impostor Elizabeth Canning, 
by whom he was completely deceived, occupied much of 
his time and thoughts during this year, and he published 
what he termed "a clear state" of her case. In conse- 
quence of the state of his health he was preparing to go 
to Bath, when he was called on by the Duke of New- 
castle to devise some plan for the suppression of street- 
robberies. His plan was approved of, the money he 
required was issued from the Treasury, and he com- 
pletely broke up a desperate gang of ruffians who had 
filled the town with terror. From the careless manner 
in which Mr. Lawrence writes, we cannot ascertain 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 75 

whether he went to Bath or not, and the other biog- 
raphers are silent. However, his case was now hopeless; 
he was attacked at once by jaundice, dropsy, and asth- 
ma. After struggling through the severe winter and 
uncongenial spring of 1754, he removed to a cottage 
near Ealing, whence he set out, on the 26th of June, 
with his wife and eldest daughter, to embark for Lisbon. 
Ever active in mind, he has left a narrative of that voy- 
age nearly as interesting as any of his fictions. He did 
not reach Lisbon till the middle of August, and on the 
8th of October he there breathed his last, in the forty- 
eighth year of his age. 

In person Fielding was tall and large, being upwards 
of six feet high, and he seems to have attached much 
value to physical power, for he forms all his heroes after 
his own likeness. In consequence probably of his 
formation, he appears to have had a high relish for ani- 
mal enjoyments. His cousin, Lady Mary, gives it as 
her opinion that no man ever enjoyed life more than he 
did. "His happy constitution," she adds "even when 
he had with great pains half-demolished it, made him 
forget every evil when he was before a venison pasty or 
over a flask of champagne, and I am persuaded he has 
known more happy moments than any prince on earth." 
That previous to his marriage he ran headlong into every 
species of dissipation, is, I fear, not to be doubted; but, 



76 HENRY FIELDING 

as I have endeavoured to show, we have no proof that 
his life was otherwise than regular after his marriage. 
Had he, for example, been unfaithful to his adored wife, 
such was his innate candour that we can hardly doubt 
but he would have seized some occasion of confessing 
and deploring it. Even in his most licentious days, 
he never lost his respect for religion and virtue. 

It is a beautiful trait in the character of Fielding, that 
unlike Richardson, Smollet, and others of the genus 
irritabile, he seems to have been totally free from malig- 
nity. It is mere banter and ridicule which he uses 
against Cibber and others, unless a suspicion respecting 
Sir Robert Walpole, hereafter to be mentioned, should 
be well founded. Even if it is, he seems to have re- 
canted, for in the Voyage to Lisbon he terms him the 
best of men and of Ministers. 

Of his second wife he speaks in the following terms 
in various parts of the journal of his voyage, all proving 
the sterling worth of her character. "My wife, who 
behaved more like a heroine and a philosopher, though 
at the same time the tenderest mother in the world" — 
"who, besides discharging excellently well her own and 
all the tender offices becoming the female character; 
besides being a faithful friend, an amiable companion, 
and a tender nurse, could likewise supply the wants of 
a decrepit husband" — "his dear wife and child were 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 77 

both too good and too gentle to be trusted to the power 
of any man he knew." Surely a woman of whom one 
of his deep insight into human nature could thus so un- 
affectedly express himself, must have been one of the 
best of her sex. 

The daughter here spoken of, and named Eleanor 
Harriet, was by his first wife, but whether she was her 
first child or not we are not informed. She did not long 
survive her father. Nichols, in his History of Leicester- 
shire (iv, 394), gives, I presume on good authority, the 
following account of his family by his second wife: — 
"William, baptized at Twickenham, February 25th, 
1747, a barrister, eminent as a special pleader, living 
in 1807; Rev. Allen, M. A., vicar of Shepherd's Well, 
Kent, 1783; Hadington, 1787, rector of St. Cosmas 
and Damian, in the Blean, 1803, living in 1807; Amelia 
and Louise, baptized 1753." Murphy, writing in 1762, 
says he left four children, "three of which are still living, 
and are now training up in a handsome course of educa- 
tion under the care of their uncle, with the aid of a very 
generous donation given annually by Ralph Allen, Esq., 
for that purpose." Chalmers adds in a note, "Mr. 
Allen died in 1764, and bequeathed to Mrs. Fielding 
and her children £100 each." Mr. Lawrence, as usual 
without giving any authority, says he "bequeathed to 
the family an annuity of £100 a year." 



78 HENRY FIELDING 

The uncle here mentioned was Walpole's blind man, 
Fielding's brother John, who succeeded him in his office, 
and notwithstanding his want of sight, proved a most 
active and able magistrate. A blind lawyer is a most 
unusual phenomenon, for of all professions the law, 
where so much must be read, seems to stand most in 
need of vision. It would seem that Fielding, conscious 
of his own frail tenure of life, and aware of his brother's 
talent, and of his attachment to himself and family, be- 
came his instructor in the law so far as to render him 
capable of taking his place, which he counted on being 
able to obtain for him. And he was not disappointed 
in either respect. We have just quoted Murphy's 
testimony for the one, and as to the other, Fielding him- 
self says in his journal, " I therefore resigned the office 
... to my brother, who had long been my assistant." 
He could not have told us in plainer language that his 
brother was his immediate successor; yet Mr. Law- 
rence says, "Mr. Saunders Welch succeeded Fielding 
as a justice of the peace." 

The pecuniary circumstances of Fielding for the 
last few years of his life seem worth inquiring into. 
Murphy says he had an income of £400 or £500 a year; 
his own account was that he had, as already mentioned, 
"a small pension," perhaps of £100 a year, "which," 
he adds, "would, I believe, have been larger had my 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 79 

great patron been convinced of an error which I have 
heard him utter more than once — "That he could not 
indeed say that the acting as a principal justice of 
peace in Westminster was on all occasions very desira- 
ble, but that all the world knew it was a very lucrative 
office. " In opposition to this he says that, by compos- 
ing instead of inflaming the quarrels of porters and beg- 
gars . . . and by refusing to take a shilling from a 
man who most undoubtedly would not have had another 
left, I had reduced an income of about £500 a year of 
the dirtiest money on earth, to little more than £300, a 
considerable portion of which remained with my clerk. " 
This would lead us to suppose that his place was not 
worth more to him than £200 a year. His house was 
probably rent free, and he had his pension, whatever 
it was, in addition. But his writings at this period pro- 
duced him a good deal of money. He received £700 
for Tom Jones, and £800 or £1000 for Amelia; and 
possibly the Covent Garden Journal and his pamphlets 
may have brought him in enough to raise the whole pro- 
ceeds of his pen to £1800 or £2000, which would be up- 
wards of £300 a year for the years 1749-54. It would, 
however, look as if he had not husbanded well these 
sums, for speaking of a period only a twelve- month after 
the publication of Amelia, he says, "I will confess that 
my affairs at the beginning of the winter (1752-53) had 



80 HENRY FIELDING 

but a gloomy aspect." We are here to recollect that 
1752 was the year of the existence of the Covent Garden 
Journal. Viewing, then, the matter how we will, it 
cannot be denied that imprudence with regard to money 
characterized him at all periods of his life. "His 
genius," writes Lady Mary (June 5th, 1754), "deserved 
a better fate; but I cannot help blaming that continued 
indiscretion, to give it the softest name, that has run 
through his life, and I fear still remains." 

It is somewhat remarkable that Fielding does not 
appear to have had much, if any, intimacy, or even 
acquaintance, with the literary men of the day; for if 
he had, it is not likely that he who I may say goes 
out of his way to praise Hogarth, for example, would 
have left their names and works unnoticed in his novels. 
As he and Thomson were both the intimates of Lyttleton, 
we might suppose they were acquainted; and if we 
believe a ridiculous story given by Mr. Lawrence, they 
were so, but certainly not in 1731, when the latter's 
play of Sophonisba was so unmercifully ridiculed in Tom 
Thumb. The truth perhaps is, that Fielding's associa- 
tions were chiefly with the theatres and the fashionable 
world, and he had little relish for the imaginative poetry 
of Thomson, Akenside, and the other poets of the time; 
while except Johnson, then little known, there was 
hardly any prose writer of eminence. 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 81 

I will conclude these remarks with a few observa- 
tions on Fielding's principal works. 

It is well known that he failed as a dramatist, and it 
may sufficiently account for this failure to say that he 
had eminent success as a novelist. I might, like Sir 
Walter Scott and others, endeavour to account philo- 
sophically for this fact; but such displays of ingenuity 
are needless. It is a fact that as yet no man has suc- 
ceeded in both the drama and prose fiction; just as no 
poet has succeeded in the epos and in the drama. Nay 
more, to Shakspeare alone does it seem to have been 
given to succeed alike in tragedy and in comedy, but his 
poems prove that he would never have succeeded in the 
epos. Each department of literature appears to de- 
mand a different cast of intellect. Of Fielding's dra- 
matic pieces (many of them no doubt flung off with care- 
less rapidity), The Miser, The Mock Doctor, and Tom 
Thumb, alone have kept a place on the stage; all three 
having been played within the present century. The 
former two are indebted for their success to the genius 
of Moliere, from whom they were borrowed, the latter 
to its extravagance and comic absurdity. The far larger 
portion of its clever parodies must have escaped 
even its earliest audiences, as being on pieces little 
known or read; but it is certainly still very pleasant to 
read it with the notes of Scriblerus Junior. 



82 HENRY FIELDING 

Joseph Andrews first revealed to Fielding where his 
real power lay. It had its origin, I am convinced, in 
pure fun and mischief. He saw that Pamela had its 
ridiculous side, and was capable of giving scope for 
parody; but in justice to Richardson, I must say that it 
is the utmost injustice to ascribe art to his heroine. 
Her character is, in my eyes, perfectly pure and inno- 
cent, but she has a secret and unconscious affection for 
the man who is seeking to destroy her virtue. But how 
absurd was it in Richardson to ascribe such sense, wis- 
dom I might say, and talents to a girl only turned of 
fifteen. Fielding is never so false to nature as this. 

Fielding tells us his romance is written in imitation 
of that of Cervantes. The resemblance, I presume, 
he considered to consist in this, that the one was intend- 
ed to ridicule the romances of chivalry, the other the 
biographies of Cibber and Pamela; that both employ 
the mock-epic in style; both contain the adventures of 
two personages rambling from place to place; both are 
diversified by episodes, &c. But there is one great 
advantage on the side of the original, it rarely if ever 
offends delicacy in scenes or language, while the imita- 
tor gives us scenes which — though not so bad as some 
in Pamela — offend, at least, female delicacy, and lan- 
guage unpleasing to modest ears. These blemishes, 
however, are confined to the first book, for in the re- 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 83 

mainder of the work there are not more than a couple 
of offensive expressions. Still we must allow that, 
although Fielding uses coarse and indelicate language 
he is never prurient; his mind was too vigorous and 
manly to allow of it. So Shakspeare is often wanton, 
but never prurient. 

Fielding assures us that he took all his characters 
in this work direct from nature (and the same may be 
asserted of his other works), though he disguised them 
so that the original could not be recognised. There 
is, then, little doubt that his friend Young sat for Parson 
Adams, and Peter Walter for Peter Pounce. No doubt 
he had met with a Silpslop, but her language may have 
been suggested by that of Moria in the Cynthia s Revels 
of Ben Jonson, of whom Fielding was a reader and 
admirer. She is herself the original of Mrs. Malaprop. 
In all his works of fiction we meet his wife under one 
form or other; for as Albano's wife was the modello for 
his Venuses and other beautiful female forms, so Field- 
ing's appears in all his virtuous women. Fanny is what 
she would have been in a humble rank; Mrs. Wilson 
adumbrates her as the generous girl who without reserve 
bestows herself and her fortune on her imprudent lover. 

I am decidedly of opinion that Joseph Andrews had 
the further merit of having suggested the more graceful 
and elegant, but more improbable, Vicar of Wakefield. 



84 HENRY FIELDING 

I regard the Vicar and Mrs. Primrose as Parson Adams 
and his wife, elevated, refined, and polished, idealized 
as it were. To any one who reads the two works care- 
fully, sundry traits will show that the author of the one 
had the other in his mind. Such are the reading of 
the little boy in each, and the rebuking of the merriment 
at the wedding, to which others might be added, if 
necessary. 

The Journey from this World to the Next is to me 
an unpleasing fiction. The main requisite for such a 
fiction is precisely that in which Fielding was most de- 
ficient — a poetic imagination. It will therefore rarely, 
I think, be read for pleasure, but it may be for infor- 
mation, for it is a fund of acute satire and profound 
observation on human nature. The idea seems to 
have been suggested by the Vision of Marraton in the 
Spectator, and the Dream in the Guardian (No. 158), 
while the transmigrations of Julian may have had their 
origin in Pug's letter (Spectator, No. 343), or in the 
verses in the first scene of Jonson's Volpone. One of 
the best things in it, to my mind, is the account Julian 
gives of his experiences as a beggar, in the nineteenth 
chapter; and the description of the palace of Death is 
the nearest approach that Fielding has ever made to the 
sublime. In this work alone, which however is unfin- 
ished, we find no portrait of the writer's wife. 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 85 

The Life of Jonathan Wild has proved a perfect 
crux to the critics, a proof perhaps that it may have a 
recondite sense. It is not the real life of that villain, 
which may be found in the Newgate Calendar, or in 
Watson's Life of Fielding; it seems rather to be an 
attempt at forming the ideal of perfect and consummate 
villainy, absorbed in self and unchecked by feeling or 
remorse. It is probable that Fielding, while studying 
the law, used to attend at the Old Bailey, and at the 
justice-room at Bow-street, that he thus learned some 
of the language and modes of procedure of those whom 
he denominates prigs; and that thence the idea of such 
a work may have arisen. But this hypothesis does not 
quite satisfy me, and I must own that I am inclined to 
see in it a scathing political satire, like Dante's Inferno, 
where, from fear of the consequences, the real meaning 
is so veiled as to be hardly discoverable without a key. 
In a word, my suspicion is that the rather unusual terms, 
Prigs, and Prigism, stand for Whigs and Whigism; 
and that Jonathan Wild is Sir Robert Walpole; the 
political satire perhaps commencing with Wild's for- 
mation of his gang, what precedes being given chiefly 
for the purpose of putting the ordinary reader on a 
wrong scent. Many allusions to the life, both public 
and private, of this Minister, may, I think, be discerned 
throughout the work. Fielding had made two poetic 



86 HENRY FIELDING 

addresses to this statesman, and he had dedicated to 
him his play of The Modern Husband in very adulatory 
terms. He may have been stung by his neglect, and 
been mortified by the treatment he received when danc- 
ing attendance on him, and have had a keen recollection 
of the Licensing Act and its consequences to him, and 
hence have conceived a bitter resentment, to which he 
thus gave vent. If it be objected that Fielding was a 
Whig himself, it may be replied that he was only so in 
the higher and purer sense, as the true friend of civil 
and religious liberty, while he had a thorough contempt 
and detestation of the arts and the corruption of states- 
men, whether Whig or Tory. There can certainly be 
little doubt but that the Roger Johnson whom Wild 
supplants in Newgate, is Robert Walpole, and this would 
seem to militate against my theory. But such changes 
are not unusual in this kind of satires, and I take Wild 
here to represent Pultney, who was the chief agent in 
overthrowing Walpole, and the chapter to have been 
inserted by Fielding in disgust at the conduct of Wal- 
pole's successors. Heartfree and his wife (the latter as 
usual adumbrated from Mrs. Fielding) seem to have 
been introduced only to vary the story and interest by 
contrast; yet even in them there may be a meaning 
which I am unable to discern. It may also be objected 
that this work was reprinted with additions and correc- 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 87 

tions, in 1754, after Walpole, and with him Fielding's 
hostility, had been dead some years, and when he was 
soon to style him "the best of men." The reason may 
have been that the object of his satire had been so closely 
enveloped that it had not been discovered; the work 
had been generally regarded as a kind of romance, and 
under this character he was now well content to let it 
continue. 

[If my hypothesis respecting Jonathan Wild be 
correct, I think the work may have been formed in the 
following manner. Fielding may have written the satire 
in the heat of his indignation at the Licensing Act, but 
he did not publish it. With time and the fall of Wal- 
pole in 1742, his anger probably expired, and the satire 
would never have seen the light, had he not been pressed 
for materials to make up his Miscellanies in the follow- 
ing year. He may then have gone over his Life of 
Jonathan Wild, have made additions to it, and al- 
tered it so that the satire might not easily have been 
discovered, or that he might be able to deny that it 
contained any individual satire]. 

I now come to Tom Jones, the matchless Tom Jones, 
on which I could almost write a volume, while my limits 
only allow me to correct a few errors and misapprehen- 
sions. 

First as to its origin and the reason of its hero's birth 



88 HENRY FIELDING 

being illegitimate. This Richardson maliciously as- 
cribed to the circumstance of the author's wife having 
been such; while Sir Walter Scott thinks that "a better 
reason may be discovered in the story itself; for had 
Miss Bridget been previously married to the father of 
Tom Jones, there could have been no adequate motive 
assigned for keeping his birth secret from a man so 
reasonable and compassionate as Airworthy." All this 
is very true, and yet I do not think it is the real reason. 
Tom Jones and Blifil are in fact the Edgar and Edmund 
of King Lear (they afterwards became Charles and 
Joseph Surface), and from what Fielding says in the 
dedication of his work to Lyttleton, I suspect that it was 
this last who suggested the subject to him,which, after an 
incubation of some years, as he says, came to the world 
in its present delightful form. Again, it is the vulgar 
opinion that Prior-park is Allworthy's house. Nothing 
can be more absurd than this idea, their sites are so 
totally different. The real site of Allworthy's mansion 
was Sharpham-Park, near Glastonbury Abbey, the 
author's birth-place. Thus a river was seen to meander 
from it for several miles, "till it emptied itself into the 
sea; with a large arm of which and an island beyond it 
the prospect was closed." In another part the view 
was "terminated by one of the towers of an old ruined 
abbey, grown over with ivy, and part of the front which 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 89 

remained entire." Let the reader compare this with 
a map of Somersetshire, and he will see that I am right. 
Further, Allworthy's house was a Gothic, Allen's a 
Grecian structure. 

//The plot of Tom Jones is generally and justly ad- 
mired; the skill with which the secret of the hero's birth 
is preserved to near the end is deserving of all praise. 
Yet in Amelia the secret of Serjeant Atkinson's chaste 
and pure affection for his lovely foster-sister is kept 
almost as well; and in the Emma of the admirable Jane 
Austen, the female Fielding, as I may justly call her, 
no less than two love-secrets are kept so well that no 
one has a conception of them, and yet when they are at 
last revealed we find that numerous circumstances of 
the narrative have had an evident bearing on them. 
The only circumstances, I believe, in Tom Jones, after 
the early part and before the latter, which have a con- 
nexion with the denouement, are the coming of Dowling 
to Allworthy's, and Jones's meeting with him at Glou- 
cester, and on the road to Coventry, and with Mrs. 
Waters at Upton. 

It is curious that in a work so carefully written we 
should be able to find a glaring anachronism and an 
equally strong anachorism. It was certainly not till 
after many a perusal that I detected either. The former 
I find had been noticed by a correspondent of the 



9 o HENRY FIELDING 

Gentleman s Magazine for 1 79 1, and I think it is to this 
that the late Mr. Armitage Brown alludes in his ingen- 
ious Autobiography of Shakspeare. I do not know that 
the anachorism has ever been discerned. 

The fifth book of this novel ends in the month of 
June, and the sixth, as the heading tells us, contains 
about three weeks, toward the close of which Jones is 
discarded by Airworthy; the seventh contains three days, 
and the eighth two, during which last Jones and 
Partridge left Gloucester at five o'clock, when it was 
nightfall, for, as the author observes, "it was now mid- 
winter!" It is winter during all the rest of the novel. 
How Fielding could have committed such an error is 
almost inexplicable. Possibly he may have done it to 
mystify the reader, and to imitate similar slips in Cer- 
vantes; but this hypothesis is not very satisfactory. 8 

The following anachorism is, if possible, more inex- 
plicable. In the tenth chapter of the seventh book 
Jones, on his way to Bristol, goes astray, and when, after 
nightfall, he is inquiring his way of a rustic, a Quaker 
comes up, and induces him to stop for the night in the 
adjacent village, which village, as we are informed in a 
note in the last chapter of the tenth book, was named 
Hambrook. Now Hambrook is in Gloucestershire, with- 
in four miles of Bristol, and there neither was, nor I 
believe is, any bridge over the Avon between Bristol and 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 91 

Bath, except the one near this last city. How, then, 
did not only Jones, but Sophia and Squire Western get 
across ? Further, Fielding was probably well acquaint- 
ed with this road, for from the manner in which he 
speaks of Mr, and Mrs. Whitfield, of the Bell Inn, in 
Gloucester, it is quite evident that he must have been 
more than once in their house, and he must also have 
seen the view which he describes from Mazzard Hill, 
between Gloucester and Upton. The only way in 
which I can account for this knowledge is by supposing 
that Fielding used occasionally, when the circuit was 
ended, to go from Bath or Bristol to Hagley Park, on a 
visit to his friend Lyttleton, whom we know Thomson 
used to visit once a year; for the worthy Sir Thomas 
allowed his son to take every liberty of this kind. Hence 
also Fielding seems so well acquainted with the road 
from Coventry to London. I really, then, can see no 
adequate way of accounting for the mistake about 
Hambrook: it is a strange specimen of oscitancy. 

[It seems to me extremely likely that one time or 
other, if not more than once, Lyttleton may have met 
Fielding at Bath, and they may have proceeded together 
to Hagley Park. I infer this from Fielding having 
seen the view from Mazzard Hill; for I do not believe 
that he had sufficient taste for natural scenery and ex- 
tensive rural prospects, to induce him to undergo the 



92 HENRY FIELDING 

toil of ascending that hill by himself for their sake, 
while I can easily conceive him to have accompanied 
Lyttleton, who had that taste in such an excursion, and 
in compliment to whom he may have introduced the 
description. I cannot help thinking, by the way, that 
Sir Thomas Lyttleton and Hagley Park may have aided 
in the creation of Airworthy and his residence]. 

But there is another strange matter connected with 
Hambrook. It must have been pretty far in the night 
when the soldiery came there, and as they could only 
have come from Bristol, they must have left it at night 
and so have marched without halting all that night and 
all the next day, a most unusual circumstance, even 
supposing the march a forced one. 

It is rather amusing — some might say he had ex- 
perience for his guide in the matter — how he makes 
his personages to manage without money. Parson 
Adams is on his way, and with a horse, to London, with 
only nine and sixpence in his pocket; Jones is going as 
a volunteer, and then goes to London with only the 
sixteen guineas that Sophia had sent him; and strangest 
of all, Sophia herself, after sending him all she had and 
losing her bank-bill, has still plenty of money in her 
purse. 

I trust it will be believed that it is merely as matters 
of curiosity that I point out these slips in so great a 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 93 

writer: Cervantes has fully as many, and of equal 
magnitude; and those in the Vicar of Wakefield are more 
numerous still. In fact, hardly any novelist, unless it 
be Jane Austen — in whose works I have been unable 
to detect any such — has escaped this danger. With 
respect to her, if we did not know that her narratives are 
fictitious, we might suppose they related nothing but 
real events. 

In Tom Jones, as in Fielding's other novels, every 
character may be said to be real; for he never painted 
without a modello. The tradition of Salisbury, as Mr. 
Greenley informed me, is that Thwackum was Dr. Hale, 
the master of the Cathedral-school; and that Square 
was Chubb, the deist, a tallow-chandler in that city; 
while two squires in the neighbourhood vie for the 
honour of being represented in Western. But this is 
all rather uncertain, and as for the Squire in particular, 
such characters were "plenty as blackberries" at that 
time in the country-parts of England. Lady Bellaston 
is said to have been Lady Townshend, but this I doubt, 
as she has none of that lady's peculiarities, like Lady 
Tempest in Pompey the Little, which certainly represents 
her. Airworthy is Allen and Lyttleton idealized; and 
Sophia, the charming Sophia, is of course Mrs. Fielding, 
in confirmation of which it may be observed that in 
Amelia there is hardly any description of the heroine's 



94 HENRY FIELDING 

person, because that had been described at full length 
in the earlier tale. 

In a rather tasteless critique on Tom Jones, I find it 
stated that "a living (in 1811) female writer has ar- 
raigned the delicacy of Sophia for riding about the coun- 
try after her lover." The critic very properly defends 
her, and hints that the objector perhaps had never felt the 
power of love. In truth Sophia might have cried with 
Racine's Atalaide (and Racine knew something of 
these matters), 

Ah, Zaire ! Tamour a-t-il tant de prudence ? 

For my own part, I love Sophia all the better for this, 
and for her fib to Lady Bellaston, and her flattery of 
her aunt. It shows she was a real, genuine woman, and 
not an ideal creation. 

We constantly hear of the vices of Jones. I must 
confess I never could discern them. Vice is a habit, 
and he had no vicious habit. He did not drink, swear, 
lie, cheat, game, oppress, malign, &c. No doubt on a 
few occasions he yielded to temptations that few men 
could resist. I allude of course to his dealings with the 
fair sex. As to the first with Molly Seagrim, any one 
who recollects the kind of person that Jones is described 
as being, and what the English peasantry are, will see 
that it was almost impossible that some girl would not 
have laid herself out to seduce him, and of course have 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 95 

succeeded. We must always recollect that Fielding 
painted men as they are, not as they ought to be, and 
that Xenocrates are rather rare. His renewed acquaint- 
ance with her on the day of Allworthy's recovery is ex- 
plained by his having drunk too much wine. The affair 
with Mrs. Waters, too, at Upton, is really a sort of 
matter of course; few young men of spirit would have 
refused the challenge. That with Lady Bellaston seems 
of a deeper die. Here the critics treat him as a degraded 
wretch who actually submitted to be taken into keeping. 
Even if he had done so, he would have had high people to 
keep him in countenance. Lord A. Hamilton, for ex- 
ample, a son of the Duke of Hamilton, was kept publicly 
at that time by a Miss Edwards, a lady of fortune, and 
he was not excluded from society (nor perhaps was she 
either). Lady Vane, who was married to his brother, 
describes him as coming to visit them in great state. 
The simple fact is, Jones was regularly trepanned by the 
artful lady, and a bank bill was forced upon him who 
had not a shilling in his pocket; the whole time of their 
acquaintance did not exceed a week, and after the first 
they had but one private meeting. What regular con- 
tract was there here ? what continuance of vicious inti- 
macy, as is usually assumed ? I declare I doubt if Jones's 
moral guilt is not greater in going to board and lodge 
himself and servant with poor Mrs. Miller, when he had 



96 HENRY FIELDING 

no money, and no prospect of getting any. We must 
also never leave out of view that Jones is most severely 
punished for all his transgressions in this way. Think 
of his agonies when he learns from Partridge that Mrs. 
Waters was his mother! I once recommended Tom 
Jones to a lady who has since written some very pleasing 
novels. She read it, and wrote to me to say that in her 
opinion it was not merely a moral, but a religious book. 
And she was right, for the final and permanent impres- 
sion which it leaves on the mind is most strongly in fa- 
vour of religion and virtue. Who can escape improve- 
ment from the contemplation of such characters as 
Sophia and Allworthy ? It has been my favourite from 
my very boyhood, and I think I may say without vanity, 
that my moral sense is so strong that such could not 
have been the case if its tendency had been adverse to 
virtue; I never could take to Byron. 

[Mr. James Haywood Markhand has very kindly 
transmitted to me a lecture delivered by him in Bath, 
in August, 1856, on the history and antiquities of that 
city. It contains the following passage relating to 
Tom Jones'. — "An excellent prelate, now living, told 
me that he would not hesitate placing the book in the 
hands of a young man, if accompanied with suitable 
caution and advice."] 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 97 

Amelia is no doubt the setting sun. Beautiful and 
interesting as it is, it wants the freshness, the vigour, 
the varied charms of its predecessors, its tone is too 
uniformly sombre. Amelia, indeed, stands forth in 
celestial puritv; Dr. Harrison is kind and good; honest 
Atkinson's pure and chaste love for his sweet foster- 
sister is delightful; and Mrs. Bennet, with all her 
pedantry* and vanity, is much to be liked; Colonel Bath 
is a preux chevalier. But Booth is weak — no worse, 
for I cannot assent to the terms worthless and such 
like so liberally bestowed on him — and almost all the 
rest are bad. Booth, like Jones, succumbs to tempta- 
tion twice. The first, all the circumstances considered, 
I must regard as irresistible by anv man of ordinary 
mould. In the latter, by a little virtuous resolution he 
might have escaped. Yet how many instances of simi- 
lar weakness have I known ! 

I regard the following circumstance as a proof of 
decadence in Amelia', manv characters and events 
are taken from the author's plavs. Thus in the Justice 
caught in his own Trap, we meet with the good and the 
bad justice, the bailiff and the spunging-house; in the 
Temple Beau, Yeromil recovers his propertv in the same 
manner as Amelia does; while in the Modern Husband 
we have in Mr. and Mrs. Bellamont, Mr. and Mrs. 



98 HENRY FIELDING 

Modern, and Lord Richly, the germs of Booth and 
Amelia, Captain Trent, Miss Matthews, the Lord, and 
Colonel James. 

One valuable feature in Amelia is the directing 
attention to various legal and social evils, many of 
which were not removed till our own days. I am not 
quite sure that we are really so very far in advance of 
our forefathers in morality as we fancy; but we cer- 
tainly do not perform our immoral acts so openly as 
they did; we contrive to cast a veil over matters in 
which they had no concealment. It would now, for 
instance, be almost libellous to say that people in office 
or of influence touched, as it was termed, for procuring 
places, &c, yet the thing still exists. I know a case 
myself where an offer was made to procure a baronetcy, 
but it was intimated that the parties expected to touch 
pretty handsomely. Let us not, then, plume ourselves 
too much, when we recollect the railways, joint-stock 
banks, adulteration of food, accommodation bills, and 
many other circumstances of our own day. 

Amelia, too, has its improbabilities, of which I shall 
only notice the following. Miss Matthews in the prison 
receives a letter and a bank-bill from Colonel James. 
Now from her preceding history, it is utterly impossible 
that he could at that time have known anything about 
her. The appearance there of Amelia seems also inex- 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 99 

plicable, and it is only at the end of the work that we 
can at all account for it, and that without any assistance 
from the author. 

Independently of their value as the creations of gen- 
ius, the novels of Fielding are inestimable as genuine 
pictures of English manners in the middle of the last 
century. "Oh!" exclaimed Dr. Arnold, "if we had but 
a Tom Jones of the times of Augustus ! " As an instance 
I may mention that from this novel we learn that it was 
so much the custom at that time for ladies to travel 
on horseback, that side-saddles were kept at all the inns 
throughout the country. I do not recollect to have met 
with any allusion to this custom in any other work, 
novel, play, or poem of that time. Sir Walter Scott 
also observes that Fielding's novels are so thoroughly 
English that no one can perfectly understand them who 
has not been born, or at least lived some time, in England. 
Of the truth of this remark I can myself bear witness; 
for I thought I understood them thoroughly till I went 
to live for some time in one of the southern counties, 
when I discovered many traits of manners in them, of 
the existence of which I had previously been uncon- 
scious. 

Without possessing the grace and elegance of Addi- 
son and Goldsmith, the lightness and vivacity of Lesage, 
or the dignity and rotundity of Cervantes, Fielding was 



ioo HENRY FIELDING 

master of a vigourous, manly, and truly English style, 
though occasionally incorrect. His most remarkable 
peculiarity is the constant employment, no matter who 
is the speaker, of hath and doth for has and does,. This 
occurs, I believe, in no other writer of the eighteenth 
century. 

Fielding is to be classed among those writers who are 
invidiously styled egotists, because they speak freely of 
themselves, their feelings, opinions, affairs, and works. 
This formula contains many great names — such as 
Horace, Montaigne, Milton, Boileau, Pope, and others 
(and most, if not all of these were eminent for good 
taste and knowledge of the world); besides the whole 
band of autobiographers. If I may judge by my own 
feelings, writers of this class are the most delightful. I 
never, in fact, could read the Exegi monumentum of 
Horace, or the Address to Fame of Fielding, without a 
secret elation of mind and rejoicing at seeing their 
anticipations so fully verified. The proper place for 
this egotism is the preface, which I regard as the author's 
manor, for a well-constructed work requires no preface; 
and if he adheres rigidly to truth, and endeavours to 
form a just estimate of himself and his powers, though 
the envious and little-minded may carp and sneer, he 
may be sure that he will command the sympathy of all 
whose minds have been cast in the mould of taste, good 
feeling, and generosity. 



LIFE BY KEIGHTLEY 101 

I have now, I trust, fulfilled the promise I made at 
setting out. Had I not been limited in space I should 
have been more copious, and of course more convincing, 
on some points, and have treated of various other mat- 
ters which I have been obliged to omit. 



ANNOTATIONS 



ANNOTATIONS 



Book-plate of Rt. Hon. Basil Fielding 
Earl of Denbigh ; lyoj 




ucldixw Earls ofDenli 

5 Sl^kl* ^ 



ANNOTATIONS 



1 Mr. Keightley's doubts have been sustained by Mr. J. H. 
Round, in the Genealogist for April 1894, by Mr. A. C. Fox-Davies and 
other competent authorities, and the connection of the house of Den- 
bigh with the counts of Hapsburg is now generally discredited. It is 
well that this tradition was not dispelled before Gibbon wrote his fine 
passage: "The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their 
humble brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that 
exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the 
Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of the house of Austria." 

2 Andrew Kippis is referred to here. He edited the second 
edition of the Biographica Britannica in 1777-93. The anecdote is 
related in the Gentleman s Magazine for 1786. In a book-plate of 
Basil Fielding, Earl of Denbigh, dated 1703, and here reproduced, it 
will be noticed the Earl spells his name as the novelist spelled his. 

3 To "Notes and Queries" for September 6, 1862 (Third Series, 
Vol. II, p. 199), Mr. Keightley communicates the following: 

"Some time ago, when engaged in inquiries relating to Fielding, 
I thought of looking at Doctors' Commons for the will of his grand- 
father, Sir H. Gould. I found it there and have a copy of it. It is 
very short, and seems chiefly to have been made for the sake of pro- 
viding for his daughter, Mrs. Fielding, and it was executed on the 
eighth of March, 1706-7, a little before the birth of her first child, 
Henry. In this he says, T give to my son William Day 3,000 1. in 
trust for the sole and separate use of my daughter Sarah Fielding,' 



io6 HENRY FIELDING 

&c. Then after giving ioo I. to his wife, he adds, 'And all the rest of 
my goods, chattels, and plates, debts and money, I give to my son 
Davidge Gould, whom I make my whole and sole executor of this 
my last will and testament.' I am no lawyer, but I presume that 
William Day Gould was the eldest son, who came in for the landed 
property; and I have an impression on my mind that he was the father 
of the second Sir Henry, who was, beyond doubt, Henry Fielding's 
first cousin, to whose Miscellanies he was a subscriber in 1743. 

"It is rather remarkable that the name of one of the witnesses to 
Sir Henry Gould's will is William Day, a relation it may be supposed." 
-Thos. Keightley. 

4 To the second edition of David Simple, published in 1744, 
Henry Fielding contributed the introduction. In 1797 there was 
published in Paris the "CEuvres complettes de M. Fielding," and 
volumes 11 to 14 contain the "Aventures de Roderick Random; par 
Fielding," while volumes 18 to 20 are devoted to "David Simple; ou 
le Veritable Ami." Odder yet, George Virtue, the London publisher, 
issued in 1822 an edition of David Simple which he credited to "Henry 
Fielding, Esq., author of Tom Jones, &c, " and, though giving an 
extended biography of our author, in which David Simple is not once 
mentioned, the introduction, the only thing Henry Fielding contribut- 
ed to the volume, is omitted. 

5 The clergyman of Motcombe, a neighbouring village says 
Hutchins, quoted by Austin Dobson. 

6 The second edition of the Miscellanies is not as rare as Mr. 
Keightley supposes, but its identity is obscure. It bears the same 
date as the first, 1743. Volumes I and III are noted on the title- 
page as " The Second Edition " while Volume II omits this line. 
So this set is sometimes quoted by booksellers as " Vols. I and III, 
second edition; Vol. II, first edition." But these editions are easily 



ANNOTATIONS 107 

to be distinguished from the fact that the first is noted as "Printed 
for the Author and Sold by A. Millar," while the second edition was 
"Printed for A. Millar." 

7 Mr. George Saintsbury in his general Introduction to Field- 
ing's works published by Messrs. Dent & Co. in 1893, thus disposes of 
this story: "Horace Walpole at second-hand draws us a Fielding, 
pigging with low companions in a house kept like a hedge tavern; 
Fielding himself, within a year or two, shows us more than half- 
undesignedly in the Voyage to Lisbon that he was very careful about 
the appointments and decency of his table, that he stood rather upon 
ceremony in regard to his own treatment of his family, and the treat- 
ment of them and himself by others, and that he was altogether a per- 
son orderly, correct, and even a little finikin. Nor is there the slightest 
reasonable reason to regard this as a piece of hypocrisy, a vice as alien 
from the Fielding of fancy as from the Fielding of fact, and one the 
particular manifestation of which, in this particular place, would 
have been equally unlikely and unintelligible." 

8 Errors in "Tom Jones "-Real and Unreal: This ana- 
chronism, the speedy transformation of the scene of the novel from 
summer to winter, was not discovered by Mr. Keightley,as he acknowl- 
edges, but was first pointed out by a correspondent in the Gentleman s 
Magazine for May, 1 79 1, vol. xli, page 434. As the item is brief it 
may be quoted entire: 

"Mr. Urban: May 6. 

I should be much obliged if any of your correspondents can inform me who was 
the author of the second volume of Maitland's History of Scotland; for, as the title-page 
teaches us, Maitland only wrote the first. 

"In the celebrated novel of Tom Jones, we find the first volume closes in the montb 
of June; the second volume contains three weeks, five days, twelve hours, and in the 
end we find a hard and long frost: the other two volumes proceed with winter trans- 
actions. How is this to be palliated ? Hinc Inde. - " 



108 HENRY FIELDING 

The battle-royal took place at the latter end of June, call it, if 
you will, June 23. Book vi recounts the events of three weeks which 
would bring Jones's dismissal by Allworthy to July 14. Book vii ac- 
counts for three days and brings Jones to the Inn at Hambrook on, 
say, July 17. Book viii tells of two days only, and announces that 
it was now midwinter, tho' according to the author's chronology it 
could not have been later than July 19, or if you place the battle at 
June 30, the latest possible date, midwinter appears on July 26. 
This error simply cannot be explained away, but if we insist upon 
some explanation Mr. Keightley's effort will do as well as another. 

Mr. Keightley's own discovery, that Sophia had apparently 
plenty of money in her purse after losing her bank-bill, is of compara- 
tively little importance, I think. After sending Jones all the money 
she had, Sophia, in Book vii, Chapter ix, pretends to acquiesce in her 
father's demands, and the delighted squire gives her "a large bank 
note," but he may in addition have given her a hand-full of guineas 
and at the worst the author can be blamed only for his failure to re- 
count the incident. She was the daughter of a wealthy man and she 
may well have been possessed of money without it being absolutely 
necessary for the author to tell how she got it. 

Mr. Keightley's anachorism "is, if possible, more inexplicable," 
and we wonder how he could have written that "there neither was, nor 
I believe is, any bridge over the Avon between Bristol and Bath," and 
he asks, "how then did not only Jones, but Sophia and Squire Western 
get across ?" Bath is about twelve miles from Bristol by the old high- 
way, and there were in the eighteenth century at least two bridges 
crossing the Avon between Bath and Bristol. One, a stone bridge 
with a single arch, connected the two roads between Bath and Bristol 
about two miles from Bath, and the other crossed the Avon near 
Keynsham, five miles below the other bridge, or seven miles from 



ANNOTATIONS 109 

Bath and five from Bristol, just below the mouth of the river Chew. 
Over either of these two bridges our travellers could have passed with- 
out hindrance from Somersetshire into Gloucestershire. Mr. Keight- 
ley could have proved the existence of these bridges by consulting 
Paterson's British Itinerary, 1785; or Archibald Robertson's Topo- 
graphical Survey of the great road from London to Bath and Bristol, 
1792. 

Mr. J. F. Meehan, of Bath, writes me as follows under date of 
August 28, 1907: "The bridge over the Avon about two miles from 
Bath, connecting the two roads between Bath and Bristol, is now 
known as Newton Bridge. It was built by John Strahan, land sur- 
veyor and architect, of Bristol and Bath, about 1727-28. The bridge 
was rebuilt later in the 18th century, and widened about 1826. It 
was considerably repaired about three or four years ago. The bridge 
about five miles further on over the Avon is at the eastern side of 
Keynsham. This bridge is shown in a map of Somerset dated 161 1. 
It was partially destroyed to prevent Monmouth approaching Bristol 
in 1685, and was repaired by Monmouth in 1688." 

Mr. Keightley contributed all these criticisms to Notes and 
Queries, May 30, 1863, Third Series, Vol. Ill, pp. 424, 425; and it 
is strange that the wide-awake readers of this paper did not point 
out his errors in topography. To his list he adds the following: 

" I will notice another topographical error. Sophia and her 
cousin, on their flight from Upton, arrive at a town, where they 
meet the Irish Lord. From all the circumstances this town must 
have been Evesham, and they must have gone to London by Ox- 
ford. Yet when Jones follows them, he comes to Coventry; and so, 
though we hear nothing of it, must have passed through Stratford 
and Warwick. The only way I can account for this, is by supposing 
the work to have been laid aside again at the end of the eleventh 



no HENRY FIELDING 

book; and that the author, before he returned to it, had been down 
again at Hagley, going from London and returning through Cov- 
entry." 

Now why does Mr. Keightley insist that the town where Sophia and 
Mrs. Fitzgerald meet the Irish Lord must have been Evesham ? The 
Irish Lord was probably posting to London, having crossed the 
channel from Dublin to Holyhead and from there the most direct post 
road to London passed through Chester and Coventry and not through 
Evesham at all. Evesham again is far south of Coventry, and yet 
when Jones reaches this inn he tries to get horses to take him to Coven- 
try whither Sophia had gone on her way to London. Evesham is 
therefore entirely out of the question, and the inn must have been 
somewhere a few miles north of Coventry on the highway between 
London and Chester. Possibly this inn may have been at Coleshill, 
twelve miles beyond Coventry. Jones departed from the inn during 
the early evening, after dinner, and reached Coventry about midnight, 
though detained by storm in the barn with the gypsies for an hour or 
more. This would give the party three or four hours on the road and 
one or two in the barn, long enough for Partridge to get into trouble 
with the gypsy woman, and long enough for the saddle horses to carry 
the party twelve miles over a straight road to Coventry, but not long 
enough to take Jones and his party by night over cross-roads a dis- 
tance of more than thirty miles from Evesham to Coventry. 

From Coventry the road to London was easy to follow, though it 
passed through no considerable towns. Mr. Keightley insists that 
Sophia must have gone to London from Evesham through Oxford, but 
we are told in Chapter xiii of Book xii exactly what route Jones took, 
and that all the time he was following Sophia. He passes through 
Daventry, in Northamptonshire, nineteen miles from Coventry; also 
through Stratford, not on the Avon, for this is Old Stratford, or Stony 



AXXOTATIOXS in 

Stratford on the Ouse, on the border between Northampton and Bucks, 
and about twenty miles from Daventry. Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, 
eighteen miles further on, is reached the next dav at noon, a few hours 
after Sophia had left it, and vet according to Mr. Keightlev's theory 
she should have been at Oxford at that time. Thirteen miles more 
brings Jones to St. Albans, in Herts, only two hours behind Sophia. 
It was two miles beyond Barnet, or near Whetstone, that Jones fell in 
with the stranger who tried to rob him at a mile from Highgate, or 
some five miles north of London. 

There is no error in all of this except in Mr. Keightley's unreason- 
able speculation, that Evesham was the point of departure for London. 
Call the place Coleshill and all difficulty disappears. 



APPENDIX A 



BIOGRAPHIES OF FIELDING 



BIOGRAPHIES OF HENRY FIELDING 

Allibone, S. Austin. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature 
and British and American Authors Living and Deceased; from the 
Earliest Accounts to the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Vol. I. 
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874. 

Fielding, pp. 591-595. Contains valuable notes and references. 

Anonymous. Adventures in search of a Real Friend, through the 
Cities of London and Westminster. By Henry Fielding, Esq.; Author 
of Tom Jones, etc. London: Printed by S. Cave; and published by 
G. Virtue, 6 Panger Alley, Paternoster Row, 1822. 

Life of Henry Fielding, pp. vii-xvi. This biography is a mere abbreviation of 
Murphy's Essay, and this story of David Simple was written by Henry Fielding's sister 
Sarah. The only thing that Henry Fielding contributed to the story was the Preface, 
and this the sapient Editor omits. 

Barbauld, Mrs. Anna Letitia. The History of the Adventures 
of Joseph Andrews and his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. The British 
Novelists, Vol. XVIII. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, &c, 1810. 

"Fielding," pp. i-xxxii. Second edition, London, 1820. 

Creasy, Edward S. Memoirs of Eminent Etonians; with No- 
tices of the Early History of Eton College. By Edward S. Creasy, 
M. A., Barrister at Law; Professor of History in University College, 
London ; Late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge ; formerly New- 
castle scholar, Eton. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington 
Street; Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, 1850. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 281-299. 



u6 HENRY FIELDING 

Cunningham, George G. Lives of Eminent and Illustrious 
Englishmen, from Alfred the Great to the Latest Times; on an orig- 
inal plan. Vol. V. Glasgow: Fullarton & Co., no Brunswick 
Street; and 6 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh, mdcccxxxvii. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 221-227. 

Dobson, Austin. Fielding. London: Macmillan and Co., 1883. 

Pp.xii, 196. "English Men of Letters;'" edited by John Morley. 

Idem. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 

Franklin Square, 1883. 

Pp. x, 184. 

Idem. Revised and Enlarged Edition. New York: 

Dodd, Mead and Company, Publishers, N. D. [1900]. 

One prel. leaf, pp. xviii, 315. Portrait. Probably no better thing than this will 
be done for Fielding. 

Idem. London: Macmillan and Co., 1902. 

Pp. xii, 210. Does not contain the later notes incorporated in the New York 
edition of 1900. 

The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. By Henry Field- 
ing; with Introduction and Notes by Austin Dobson. London: 
printed and issued by Charles Whittingham & Co., at the Chiswick 
Press, mdcccxcii. 

"Editor's Introduction," pp. v-xxi. [Hogarth's Sketch of Fielding], p. ii. "Illus- 
trative Notes,'" pp. 235-277. Notes reprinted in Vol. XVI of Fielding's Works, New 
York: Croscup and Sterling [1903], pp. 3, 169-176, 285-308. 

Eighteenth Century Vignettes. London: Chatto & 

Windus, Piccadilly, 1892. 

"Fielding's Voyage to Lisbon," pp. 68-78. 

Idem. Third Series. London: Chatto & Windus, 1896. 

"Fielding's Library," pp. 164-178. 

At the Sign of the Lyre. London: Kegan Paul, 

Trench, Triibner & Co. mdcccxxxv. 

"Henry Fielding. (To James Russell Lowell)," pp. 107-110. 



BIOGRAPHIES 117 

Dobson, Austin. "Henry Fielding:" in Bibliographia,Vo\. I. 
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner and Company, Limited, 
1895. Part II, pp. 163-173. 

This is the essay on Fielding's Library afterward incorporated in Eighteenth Cen- 
tury Vignettes: Third Series, 1896, pp. 164-178. 

English Men of Letters: Samuel Richardson. New 

York: The Macmillan Company. London: Macmillan & Co., 
Ltd., 1902. 

Fielding, pp. 32, 37, 42-47, 96, 106-113, 116-119, 121, 122, 145, 146, 157, 162, 
195,200. 

William Hogarth. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 

and Company, Limited, St. Dunstan's House, Fetter Lane, Fleet 
Street, E. C, 1891. 

Fielding, pp. 47 n., 62, 63, 71 n., 72 n., 81, 115, 116, 123, i5on., 176,285. 

Horace Walpole, a Memoir. New York : Dodd, Mead 

and Company, 1890. 

Idem. London: James R. Osgood & Co., 1893. 

Fielding, pp. 79, 86, 161-163, 231, 284. 

Handbook of English Literature; originally compiled 

by Austin Dobson. New Edition, revised with New Chapters, and 
extended to the present time; by W. Hall Griffin, B. A., Professor of 
English Language and Literature at Queen's College. London: 
Crosby, Lockwood, and Son, 7 Stationers' Hall Court, Ludgate 
Hill, 1897. 

Fielding, pp. 139-140. 

Fielding and Sarah Andrew; in the Athenaum, June 2, 

1883. 

Pp. 700, 701. Reprinted in Henry Fielding, by Austin Dobson. New York: 
Dodd, Mead and Company; n. d. [1900], pp. 277-285, and in London: Macmillan & 
Co., 1902, pp. 197-202. 



n8 HENRY FIELDING 

Dobson, Austin. Fresh Facts about Fielding; in Macmillan s 
Magazine, April, 1907. Vol. II, n. s., pp. 417-422. 

[Dowling, W.] The Eton Portrait Gallery; consisting of short 
Memoirs of the More Eminent Eton Men; by a Barrister of the Inner 
Temple. With Twelve Steel Engravings, designed and executed by 
Cavalier Gabrielli. Eton College: Williams and Son; London: 
Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1876. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 539-542. 

Elwin, Rev. Whitwell. Some XVIII Century Men of Letters : 
Biographical Essays by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, some time Editor 
of the Quarterly Review, with a Memoir, edited by his son, Warwick 
Elwin. Vol. II : Sterne - Fielding - Goldsmith - Boswell and Dr. 
Johnson - Gray. With portraits, etc. London: John Murray, 
Albemarle Street, 1902. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 83-152. Portrait facing p. 139. 

Gosse, Edmund. The Works of Henry Fielding, with an Intro- 
duction by Edmund Gosse. Vol. I. Westminster: Archibald Con- 
stable and Co. ; New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898. 

"Introduction," pp. xiii-xl. 

A History of Eighteenth Century Literature (1660- 

1780) ; by Edmund Gosse, M. A., Clark Lecturer in English Literature 
at Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Macmillan and Co., and 
New York, 1889. 

Fielding, pp. 243, 244, 247, 251-259, 264, 265, 383, 384, 386. 

English Literature: an Illustrative Record; in four 

volumes. Vol. Ill, from Milton to Johnson; by Edmund Gosse, Hon. 
M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. New York : The Macmillan 
Company; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1903. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 31 1-3 15. Eight illustrations. 



BIOGRAPHIES 119 

Havard, J. A. Tom Jones, ou L* Enfant Trouve; imitation 
de T Anglais de Fielding, par de la Place. Tome Premier. Paris : 
A. Hiard, Libraire-Editeur de la Bibliotheque des Amis des Lettres, 
Rue Saint-Jacques, No. 131. 1832. 

"Notice sur Fielding et ses ouvrages," pp. 5-18, signed "J. A. Havard." 

Henley, W. E., LL.D. The complete Works of Henry Fielding, 
Esq.; with an essay on the Life, Genius and Achievement of the 
author. Miscellaneous Writings; in three volumes. Vol. III. 
Illustrated with reproductions of rare contemporary drawings and 
portraits. Printed for subscribers only by Croscup & Sterling Com- 
pany, New York [1902]. In 16 volumes. 

"Henry Fielding, 1707-1754;" pp. iii-xli. Nothing more delightful has been 
written of Fielding. Complete sets of the first and second galley proofs and of the 
final page proofs corrected and signed by Mr. Henley are in the collection of the 
editor of this volume. 

Views and Reviews; Essays in Appreciation. London: 

Published by David Nutt, in the Strand, 1890. 

Idem. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890. 

Fielding, pp. 217, 218, 229-235. 

Herbert, David. The Writings of Henry Fielding; comprising 
his celebrated works of fiction; carefully revised and collated with the 
best authorities; with a Memoir by David Herbert, M. A. Edin- 
burgh: William P. Nimmo, 1872. 

Reprinted 1887. Memoir, pp. 5-10. 

Jeaffreson, J. C. Novels and Novelists, from Elizabeth to 
Victoria. By J. Cordy Jeaffreson. Author of "Crewe Rise," &c, &c. 
In two volumes. Vol. I. London : Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, 
successors to Henry Colburn, 13 Great Marlborough Street. 1858. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 91 -1 1 7. 



120 HENRY FIELDING 

Jesse, J. Heneage. Memoirs of celebrated Etonians; including 
Henry Fielding, Thomas Gray, the Earl of Chatham, George Selwyn, 
Home Tooke, Lord North, Horace Walpole, Earl of Bute, George 
Grenville, Earl Temple, etc. etc. etc.; by J. Heneage Jesse, author 
of Memoirs of The Reign of George III, The Court of the Stuarts, etc. 
In two volumes. Vol.1. London: Richard Bentley and Son, Pub- 
lishers in ordinary to Her Majesty. 1875. 

"Henry Fielding,''' pp. 62-88. 

Keightley, Thomas. On the Life and Writings of Henry Field- 
ing. In Two Parts. Part the First [Second] in Frasers Magazine, 
January, February, 1858. Vol. LVII, pp. 1-13, 205-217; also, Post- 
script to Mr. Keightley's "Article on Henry Fielding," June, 1858. 
Vol. LVII, pp. 762, 763. 

Never reprinted until issued in this volume by the Rowf ant Club. 

Lawrence, F. The Life of Henry Fielding; with notices of his 
Writings, his Times, and his Contemporaries. By Frederick Law- 
rence, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. - Mores hominum 
multorum vidit. - Horace, De Arte Poetica. - London : Arthur Hall, 
Virtue & Co., 25, Paternoster Row. 1855. 

Pp. viii, 384. 

Lowell, J. R. Democracy and other Addresses. Boston and 
New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; The Riverside Press, 
Cambridge. 1887. 

Idem. London: Macmillan and Company. 1887. 

Fielding — Address on Unveiling the Bust of Fielding, delivered at Shire Hall, 
Taunton, Somersetshire, England, September 4, 1883. Pp. 65-88. 

McSpadden, J. W. Standard Authors' Booklets: Henry Field- 
ing. Illustrated. New York: Croscup & Sterling Company, Pub- 
lishers, n. d. [1902]. 

Pp. 32. Portrait and 7 illustrations. 



BIOGRAPHIES 121 

Mudford, William. The British . ^: .._ e "z y 

work of acknowledged merit which is usually classed under the denom- 
ination of Novels : accompanied with Biographical Sketches of the 
Authors, and a critical preface to each Work. Embellished with ele- 
gant engravings. Vol. IV. Containing Tom Jones and Jonathan 
Wild the Great. London : Published for the proprietors by W. Clark. 
New Bond Street; Goddard, Pall-Mali; Tavlor and Hessev, Fleet 
Street; J. M. Richardson, Cornhill; and Sherwood, Neely, and Tones, 
Paternoster Row. 1S11. 

-Life 2: He— Field-?."" pp. ;-ic. 

Murphy, Arthur. An Essay on the Life and Genius of Henrv 
Fielding, Esq. Signed "Arthur Murphy, Lincoln's Inn, March 25, 
1762:" in The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq.; with the Life of the 
Author. In four volumes. Volume the First. London : Printed for 
A. Millar, opposite Catharine-Street, in the Strand, m.d.cc.lxii. 

Pp. 5-49. 

Tins. :'-t firs: ir.t~z: 2: 2. 'zlzpiz'zj ::' He 1177 la.zzz.:. — 1= zztzzztz ::r :ii:s. 
:~e £r;: eiirl:r_ :: iiis ::iie::ei — :rk.s. I: zzn been zz.izz.-j :i~es :e:-r_:e: :z ~h:le :: 
in part in various succeeding editions of the works. Hogarth's portrait of Fielding 

~is er_rr;Tei z~ Bisire ::r :'~e £rs: eiiriin. 

Nichols, John. Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Centurv; 
comprising biographical memoirs of William Bower, Printer, F. S. A., 
and many of his learned Friends; An Incidental View of the Progress 
and Advancement of Literature in this Kingdom during the last Cen- 
turv; and Biographical Anecdotes of a Considerable Number of Emi- 
nent Writers and Ingenious Artists; with a verv copious Index. In 
six volumes. Vol. III. London: Printed for the author, by Nichols, 
Son, and Bentlev, at Cicero's Head. Red-Lion-Passa^e, F'.rr:-^::e7:. 
1S12. 

"No. iv, Henry Fielding,'" pp. 356-385. Portrait, from a miniature in the pos- 
session of his granddaughter, Miss Sophia Fielding, engraved by Roberts. Other ref- 
:a. 170, 728. Vol. HI, p. 717. Vol. V, p. 251. Vol. 
VI, pp. 421, 441. Vol. Yin, pp. 197,446, 496. : 2:. --;:. Y;!.IX. r. t';:. 



122 HENRY FIELDING 

Roscoe, Thomas. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling; 
by Henry Fielding, Esq.; with a Memoir of the Author, by Thomas 
Roscoe, Esq., and illustrations by George Cruikshank. In two vol- 
umes. Vol. I. London: James Cochrane and Co., n Waterloo 
Place, Pall Mall; and J. Andrews, 167 New Bond Street. 1831. 

"Memoir of the Author," pp. vii-xix. Many times reprinted. Merely an abridg- 
ment of Murphy's Essay. 

Saintsbury, George. The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and 
his friend Mr. Abraham Adams; by Henry Fielding, Esq. Vol. I. 
Edited by George Saintsbury; with illustrations by Herbert Railton 
& E. J. Wheeler. London : Published by J. M. Dent & Co. at 
Aldine House in Great Eastern Street, mdcccxciii. 

General Introduction, pp. xi-xxxvi. Contains portrait after the Taunton bust. 
An admirable piece of work. 

Scott, Sir Walter. The Novels of Henry Fielding, Esq., viz: 
I. Joseph Andrews, 2. Tom Jones, 3. Amelia, and 4, Jonathan 
Wild; complete in one volume. To which is Prefixed, a Memoir of 
the Life of the Author. London : Published by Hurst, Robinson and 
Co., 90, Cheapside. Printed by James Ballantyne and Company, at 
the Border Press: For John Ballantyne, Edinburgh. 1821. 

"Prefatory Memoir to Fielding,"" pp. i-xxiv. Dated "Abbotsford, October 25, 
1820." 

Lives of the Novelists. Vol. I. Paris: Published by 

A. and W. Galignani, at the English, French, Italian, German and 
Spanish Library, 18 Rue Vivienne. 1825. 

Fielding, pp. 1-45. 



Miscellaneous Prose Works. In six volumes. Vol. III. 

Biographical Memoirs. Edinburgh: Printed for Cadell and Co., 



BIOGRAPHIES 123 

Edinburgh; and Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London. 
1827. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 43, 44, 76, 77, 78, 89-130, 142, 184, 190-203. 

Scott, Sir Walter. Tom Jones, ou 1* Enfant Trouve. Tome 
Premier. A Paris: chez Dauthereau, Libraire, Rue de Richelieu, 
No. 20. 1828. 

"Notice Biographique et Litteraire sur Henry Fielding par Sir Walter Scott," 
pp. 1-48. 

Biographical Memoirs of English Novelists, and other 

Distinguished Persons. Vol. I. Robert Cadell, Edinburgh; Whit- 
aker and Co., London. 1834. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 77-1 16. 

Tom Jones; Histoire d' un Enfant Trouve, traduction 

nouvelle, par Defaucoupret, precedee d* un Notice Biographique et 
Litteraire sur Fielding, par Walter Scott. Tome I. Paris: Furne, 
Libraire-Editeur, Quai des Augustins, No. 39. mdcccxxxv. 

"Notice Biographique et Litteraire sur Henry Fielding," pp. i-xxiv. 

Tom Jones; ou 1' Enfant Trouve, par Fielding; traduc- 
tion nouvelle par M. Leon de Wailly; precedee d' une notice sur 
Fielding, par Sir Walter Scott. Tome Premier. Paris, Charpentier, 
Libraire-Editeur, 29 Rue de Seine. 1841. 

"Vie de Henri Fielding, par Sir Walter Scott," pp. 1-21. 

Smith, George Barnett. Our First Great Novelist; in Macmil- 
lans Magazine, May, 1874. Vol. XXX, pp. 1-18. 

Poets and Novelists : a series of Literary Studies. Lon- 
don: Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place. 1875. 

Idem. New York: D. Appleton & Co., Broadway. 

1876. 

• Fielding, pp. 251-306. 



i2 4 HENRY FIELDING 

Stapfer, Paul. Le Grand Classique du Roman Anglais : Henry 
Fielding; in Revue des Deux Mondes, September 15, 1890. Vol. CI, 
pp. 412-454. 

Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library. Third Series. London : 
Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place. 1879. 

Fielding's Novels, pp. 50-92. 

Hours in a Library. XIV: Fielding's Novels: in The 

Cornhill Magazine, February, 1877. Vol. XXXV, pp. 154-171. 

The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq.; edited with a 

Biographical Essay by Leslie Stephen. In Ten Volumes. Vol. I. 
London: Smith, Elder & Co., 15 Waterloo Place. 1882. 

"Henry Fielding,'" pp. i-civ. A valuable contribution. 

[Townsend, Geo. H.] The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling; 
by Henry Fielding. With Illustrations, and a Memoir of the Author. 
London: G. Routledge & Co., Farringdon Street; New York: 18 
Beekman Street. 1857. 

"The Life and Works of Henry Fielding," pp. iii-xvi. Signed "G. H. T. January 
30, 1857." 

Idem. London: George Routledge & Sons, Limited, 

Broadway House, Ludgate Hill, E. C. N. d. 

"The Life and Works of Henry Fielding,'''' pp. v-xviii. Signed "G. H. T." 

Idem. Vol. I. London: George Routledge & Sons, 

Broadway, Ludgate Hill; New York: 9 Lafayette Place. 1884. 

"The Life and Works of Henry Fielding," pp. v-xiv, unsigned. This is one of 
the limited editions common these days. It was reprinted from the same type in 1886 
on thinner and smaller paper, but with illustrations by Phiz added. It has since been 
reprinted without date. 

Taine, H. A. History of English Literature; translated by H. 
Van Laun, one of the masters at the Edinburgh Academy: with a 
Preface by the Author. Vol. II. Edinburgh: Edmonston and 
Douglas. 1871. 

Fielding, pp. 170-176. 



BIOGRAPHIES 125 

Taine, H. A. History of English Literature. Edinburgh: 
Edmonston and Douglas. 1874. 
Fielding, Vol. II, pp. 289-300. 

Thackeray, W. M. Fielding's Works in one volume; with a 
Memoir by Thomas Roscoe: in the Times , (London), September 2, 
1840; fol. 6, cols. 1-3. 

Extract in Timbs, J., "Anecdote Lives of the Later Wits and Humorists." Lon- 
don: 1874. Vol. II, pp. 281-287. Reprinted in Stray Papers by William Makepeace 
Thackeray. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Louis Melville. London: 
Hutchinson and Co., Paternoster Row, 1901. Pp. 103-112. Critical Papers in 
Literature, by William Makepeace Thackeray. London: Macmillan and Co., 1904. 
Pp. 202-210. The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, with In- 
troductions by William P. Trent and John Bell Henneman. Literary Essays. New 
York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., Publishers [1904]. Pp. 231-242. 

The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century : a 

series of Lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United 
States of America; by W. M. Thackeray, author of "Esmond," 
"Pendennis," "Vanity Fair," &c. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 
65 Cornhill. 1853. 

Lecture the Fifth: Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding, pp. 219-268. Fielding, pp. 
251-268. This lecture was first delivered at Willis's Rooms, London, June 26, 1851. 

Idem. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1853. 

Contains " Charity and Humour,"" for the first time reprinted. 

Idem. Leipzig: Tauchnitz. 1853. 

Idem. Second Edition: Revised. London: 1853. 

Idem. Third Edition. London: 1858. 

Idem. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1858. 

Idem. London: 1866. 

Idem. London: 1867. 



iz6 HENRY FIELDING 

Thackeray, W. M. The English Humorists of the Eighteenth 
Century. New York: 1867. 

Idem. London: 1869. 

With the Four Georges, being Vol. XIX of the works. 

Idem. New York: Harper and Brothers. [1879]. 

Idem. Edited by Ernest Regel. Halle: Niemeyer. 

1885-1890. 

Idem. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. 1893. 

Idem. Edited with an introduction and explanatory 

and critical Notes by William Lyon Phelps. New York : Henry Holt 
and Company. 1900. 

"Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding," pp. 203-247. Fielding, pp. 206, 2X1, 213, 
231-247, 332, 335, 337-341. An admirable piece of work. 

The Paris Sketch Book: by Mr. Titmarsh. With nu- 
merous designs by the author, on copper and wood. Vol. I. [II]. 
London: John Macrone, 1 St. Martin's Place, Trafalgar Square. 
1840. 

Fielding, Vol. I, p. 173, "On Some French Fashionable Novels." Vol. II, pp. 
29-33 . " Caricature and Lithography in Paris." 

The History of Pendennis: his Fortunes and Misfor- 
tunes; his Friends and his Greatest Enemy. With illustrations on 
wood by the author. Vol.1. [II]. London: Bradbury and Evans, 
11 Bouverie Street. 1849. [1850]. 

Fielding, Vol. I, p. 290. Chapter xxx. (Chapter xxix of subsequent editions as a 
full chapter was cut out). Vol. II, p. vii (Preface). 

The Virginians : a tale of the Last Century. By W. M. 

Thackeray, author of "Esmond," "Vanity Fair," "The Newcomes," 
&c. &c. With illustrations on steel and wood by the author. Vol. I. 
[II]. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1 1 Bouverie Street. 1858. [1859]. 

Fielding, Vol. I, pp. 175 (Ch. xxii), 206, 207 (Ch. xxvi), 219 (Ch. xxviii), 
254 (Ch. xxxii), 322 (Ch. xli). Vol. II, pp. 113 (Ch. xiv), 180 (Ch. xxii). 



BIOGRAPHIES 127 

Thackeray, W. M. Thackerayana : Notes and Anecdotes, illus- 
trated by nearly six hundred sketches, by William Makepeace Thack- 
eray; depicting humorous incidents in his school life, and favourite 
scenes and characters in the books of his every-day reading. London : 
Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly. 1875. 

Fielding, pp. 77-80, 127-129, containing six sketches of Joseph Andrews, and 
extracts from "The Paris Sketch Book." 

A Collection of Letters of Thackeray, 1847-1855; with 

portrait and reproductions of letters and drawings. New York: 
Charles Scribner's Sons, mdccclxxxvii. 

Fielding, pp. 125, 126. From Scribner^s Magazine, July, 1887. Vol. II, pp. 30, 31. 

Idem. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1888. 

Fielding, p. 164. 

Trumble, Alfred. (Illustrated Sterling Edition). The History 
of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great; by Henry 
Fielding. A sketch of the life of Henry Fielding, by Alfred Trumble. 
Boston: Dana Estes & Company, Publishers. [1904]. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. i-xliv. Signed "Alfred Trumble; New York, August, 
1889." This edition was published in New York as a subscription enterprise about 
1889. The Boston publishers afterwards bought the plates and re-issued it without 
date. The Biography is an excellent piece of work. 

Watson, William. The Life of Henry Fielding, Esq. With 
Observations on his Character and Writings. Edinburgh : Printed 
for Mundell, Doig & Stevenson; and J. Murray, and T. Ostell, 
London. 1807. 

Pp. iv, 176. Prepared for the Select Works described below, and a few copies 
published separately. 

Select Works of Henry Fielding, Esq.: containing the 

Adventures of Joseph Andrews, the History of Tom Jones, Amelia, 
and the History of Jonathan Wild; to which is prefixed: an 



i 2 8 HENRY FIELDING 

Original Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. In Five 
Volumes. Vol. I. Edinburgh : Printed for Mundell, Doig & Stev- 
enson; and J. Murray, and T. Ostell, London. 1807. 

"The Life of Henry Fielding, Esq." 1 prel. leaf, pp. 7-176. There is an error 
in the paging, skipping from p. 72 to p. 81. 

Watson, William. Select Works of Henry Fielding. Second 
Edition. Edinburgh: Printed for Peter Hill, S. Doig, and A. Ster- 
ling; and John Ballantyne and Co., Edinburgh: Lackington, Allen, 
and Co., Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, R. Scholey, and Cradock and 
Joy, London; and M. Keene, Dublin. 1812. 

"The Life of Henry Fielding, Esq.," pp. 3-176. Same error in paging. 

Idem. Third Edition. Edinburgh: 1818. 

"The Life of Henry Fielding, Esq.," 1 prel. leaf, p. 168. The error noted above 
corrected, but p. 167 paged as 17 and p. 168 as 158. 

Watt, Robert. Bibliotheca Brittanica; or A General Index to 
British and Foreign Literature. In two parts : Authors and Subjects. 
Vol. I.: Authors. Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable 
and Company, Edinburgh; and Longman, Hurst, Orme, Brown, & 
Green; and Hurst, Robinson, & Co., London. 1824. 

Fielding, pp. 366, o, 366, s. A mere list of Fielding's works. 

Whipple, E. P. The Life and Works of Henry Fielding: in 
North American Review, January, 1849. Vol. LXVIII, pp. 41-81. 

Essays and Reviews. Boston: 1850. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 303-357, 406. 

Idem. In Two Volumes. Vol. II. Boston and New 



York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company; The Riverside Press, 
Cambridge. 1889. 

"Henry Fielding," pp. 303-357, 406. 



APPENDIX B 



THE FIRST EDITION OF "TOM 
JONES" AND THE SEC- 
OND COMPARED 



THE 

HISTORY 

O F 

TOM JONES, 

A 

FOUNDLING. 

t ... - . . _ — . — 

In SIX VOLUMES. 

By HENRY FIELDING, Efqj 

* Mores hominum multorum *uidit* — — 

LONDON: 

Printed for A. Millar, over-againft 

Catharine-Jlreet in the Strand. 

Mdccxlix> 



THE 

HISTORY 

O F 

TOM JONES, 

A 

FOUNDLING. 

In SIX VOLUMES. 
By HENRY FIELDING, Efq; 

Mores hominum multorum vidit 



LONDON: 

Printed for A. M i l l a r, over- againf; 

Catbarine-ftreet in the Strand. 

Mdccxlix. 




The Reader is defired to correct the following 
ERRATA. 



VOL. I. Page II, line 25. for was read had, p. 52, J. 18. 
dele that. p. 57, 1. 12. for Military read Militant, p. 60, 1. 
6. for this read />. p. 68, 1. 14. read what it. p. 99, 1. 12. for 
bore read borne, p. 151,!. JO. for fevcnteen read nineteen, p. 
209, 1. 15. for be could read could. » ■ 

VOL. II. Page 29, 1. 14. read twenty, p. 86, 1. 13. read 
whipped at. p. 195, 1. 24. dele on. p. 230,1.21. for /&?/2? read 
they. p. 273, 1. 16. for bore read £or»f. p. 289,1.4. iorWratb 
read wroth, p. 306, I.22. for juffered read induced, 

VOL. III. Page 19, 1. 10. dele that. p. 27, 1. 28. read as be 
rever concealed this Hatred, p. 40, 1. 10. for fatisfiedread con- 
vinced, p. 57, I.26. read preferves and requires, p. 134., ], 2. 
dele that. 1. 9. dele Jo. p. 238. 1. laft, for profiitute read />ro-* 
f.igate. p. 274, 1. 21. {ottkofe read ri?ey. p. 277, 1. 21. read 
Affronts, p. 294, 1. 16. read Louage. p. 307, 1. 8. dele Doom/- 
day Book, or. p. 330, 1. 14. read came. p. 348. 1. 12. put a 
Comma Only after charming. 

VOL. IV. Page 35, 1. 1. read pricked up. p. 90, 1. 20. read 
t bey are effetled, 1. 25. dele /&■£/!>. p. 91", 1« 3. for Ctf/fc read 
Gold. p. no, 1. 12. for our read 0///. p. ill, 1. 22. for which 
read and. p. 120, 1. 1. dele Comma after not. p. 122, 1. 8. dele 
by. p. 169, 1. 27. read think it material, 1. 28. d ele fo. p. 
179, 1. 3. for its read her. p. 185, 1. 14. read the Truth, of 
His Degree of Suspicion I believe. 1. 23. for ivbo read ivhtcb. 
p. 193, 1. n. for Crime read Shame, p. 212, 1. 16. for »er 
read and. p. 231, 1. 13. for by r tad for. p. 235, 1. 20. fcr 
r»y«a read raifed. p. 270, I. 9. read Lalagen. p. 294, 1. 13. for 
Alternative read Alteration, 

VOL. V. Page 66. 1. 20. for Cannifier read Ztf/7/cr. p. 113, 1. 
I. read Cbaraclcrs. p. 172, 1. 6. read exifiing. p. 181, 1. 6. for 
in read on, p. 182, 1. II. read bringing her into. p. 223, 1. 12. 
dele wer. p. 249, 1. 25. read fat. p. 251, 1. 27. read two or 
three, p. 263, 1. 20. read Lady. p. 272,1. 12. dele that. p. 274, 
1. 10. dele as. p. 282, 1. II. lor for read c/j. 1. 25. read ever, 
p. 283. 1. 9. read /« j&» /^y. 



Page lxiii of "Tom Jones" 

in first issue of the six -volume edition 



Page lxiii of "Tom Jones" 

in second issue of the six -volume edition 



CONTENTS of Vol. VI. lxiii 

CHAP. XI. 

The Hiftory draws nearer to a Conclufion. 

p. 267. 
CHAP. XII. 

Approaching ftill nearer to the End. p. 280. 

CHAP. The loft. 
In which the Hiftory is concluded. p. 293, 



THE 



THE FIRST EDITION OF "TOM JONES" AND 
THE SECOND COMPARED 

On February 28, 1749, the following advertisement appeared in 
the General Advertiser: 

This day is published, in six vols., i2mo., 
THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, 

A FOUNDLING. 

— Mores hominum mult or um vidit. — 

By Henry Fielding, Esq. 

It being impossible to get sets bound fast enough to answer the 
demand for them, such Gentlemen and Ladies as please may have 
them sewed in Blue Paper and Boards, at the price of 16 s. a set, of 
A. Millar, over-against Catharine- Street, in the Strand. 

Later in the same year an edition was published in four volumes 
and this is generally referred to as the "second edition," it not being 
known apparently to any of Fielding's biographers that there were 
two editions in six volumes bearing the date 1749, and that the first 
edition was practically exhausted by the time the sixth volume went to 
press. No distinction between these two editions has been made by 
the bibliographers or booksellers, except that in some cases the an- 
nouncement is made that a particular copy is "with the leaf of errata, 
usually wanting." I have records of the sale of nine copies with the 



132 HENRY FIELDING 

leaf of errata and of fifty copies claiming to be first editions but with- 
out mentioning the errata leaf. In the first edition the errata leaf 
follows the Table of Contents in the first volume and is unpaged, but 
occupies what would be page lxiii. In the second edition the errata 
are corrected, the page suppressed, and the Table of Contents spread 
out so as to occupy a portion of page lxiii, in this case numbered, thus 
giving both editions the same number of pages. 

There is evidence also that not a little care was taken to make the 
pages of the second impression conform exactly to the first, but owing 
to carelessness on the part of some of the compositors this was not 
very successfully accomplished and many hundreds of variations have 
been noted. The errata, moreover, are confined to the first five 
volumes, making it clear, it seems to me, that this second edition was 
begun about the time the sixth volume went to press. 

I propose to point out here only the more prominent variations 
between those two editions, enough only to prove that there were two, 
and to make it possible to ascertain at a glance to which edition any 
volume of the six belongs, as the presence of the leaf of errata in any 
set can only go to prove that the first volume is of the first edition. 

VOL. I 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

xxxviii Has "Chap." at foot of page Has "Book" at foot of 

page. 

1 Has no word at foot of page Has "Chap." at foot of 

page. 

lxiii Not paged. Contains Errata Vols. I-V .. . Paged. Has Chaps. XI, 

XII, and The Last. 

II 25 "Nature was always" "Nature had always" 

15 Has 29 lines Has 28 lines. 

17 Begins with Chapter IV Chapter IV begins on 

page 16. 
38 Has 30 lines Has 29 lines. 



5 2 


18 


57 


12 


60 


6 


68 


H 


99 


12 


151 


10 


209 


*5 


210 


7 


214 





EDITIONS OF "TOM JONES" 133 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

39 Has 28 lines Has 27 lines. 

42 Has 26 lines Has 27 lines. 

"for that Persons" "for, Persons " 

"Church Military, - " "Church Militant," 

"to discover this" "to discover it ™ 

"What almost distracts " "what it almost dis- 
tracts " 

"justly bore the " "justly borne the " 

"Age of Seventeen " "Age of Nineteen'''' 

"he could by no Means " "could by no Means " 

"The Higler " "The Highler " 

Hare in vignette Woman's face in vig- 
nette. 
VOL. II 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

3 Word at foot of page "by" Word at foot of page 

"tised." 

29 14 "Nineteen," "Twenty," 

86 13 "Whipped" "Whipped at " 

94 Word at foot of page "em" Word at foot of page 

"Western" 

102 Has 29 lines Has 30 lines. 

103 Has 29 lines Has 28 lines. 

108 Has 28 lines Has 22 lines. 

195 24 "recollecting on Mr."" "recollecting Mr." 

230 21 "these had never" "they had never " 

273 16 "formerly bore" "formerly borne " 

289 4 "waxeth Wrath" "waxeth Wroth " 

306 22 "could have suffered" "could have induced " 

323 "enjoy" below note at foot of page "enjoy" above note. 

324 Has 30 lines Has 28 lines. 

VOL. Ill 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

I Word at foot of page, "Representations". Word at foot of page, 

"Repre-" 



i 3 4 HENRY FIELDING 



*GE 


LINE 


»9 


IO 


27 


28 


40 


IO 


57 


26 


: 34 


2 


34 


9 



238 


last 


274 


21 


277 


21 



FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

"that the Princess herself" "The Princess herself'' 

"and this Hatred as he never concealed", "and as he never con- 
cealed this Hatred " 

"he was satisfied" "he was convinced " 

"preserve and require" "preserves and re- 
quires " 

"that she should" "she should." 

"but so far from being" "but far from being " 

149 "Vol. III. *3 And " at foot of page "And" only at foot of 

page. 

171 "man" at foot of page "Woman" at foot of 

page. 

233 "Vol. Ill nary" at foot of page "M3 dinary" at foot of 

page. 

"prostitute a Life," "profligate a Life " 

"for those impart " "for they impart " 

"Affront and Contempt" "Affronts and Con- 
tempt." 

292 27 "Laquais a Louange " "Laquais a Louage " 

[In the Errata this is referred to as page 294 line 16.] 

307 8 "than Doomsday Book, or the vast" "than the vast " 

330 14 ["read came" says "Errata." The word is printed "came " in all 
copies I have seen before the four volume edition of 1749, ln w hich 
the word is changed to "come."] 

348 12 "Arts of charming. Say," "Arts of charming, 

say," 

349 "Vol. III." at foot of page "Vol. II." at foot of 

page. 
370 cut if inches wide cut i\ inches wide. 



VOL. IV 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

Title Lines both project beyond the "B" of "By" The "B" of "By" 

projects beyond lines . 
I 4 lines of text 7 lines of text. 



EDITIONS OF "TOM JONES" 135 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

5 Note at foot of page This note is at the foot 

of page 4. 

Contains 21 lines Contains 14 lines. 

"pricked her Ears" "pricked up her Ears" 

67-69 Double quotation marks used Single quotation marks 

used. 

"this is effected," "they are effected," 

"propose such a reward" "propose a reward." 

"Who Steals My Cash " "Who steals my Gold.''" 

"Our Englan d forever!" "Old England forever!" 

"which had preceeded" "and had preceeded " 

"and I know not, but" "and know not but " 

"but by that of" "but that of " 

Has 24 lines Has 25 lines. 

Has 29 lines Has 28 lines. 

"did not think material" "did not think it ma- 
terial " 

"so we would not" "we would not " 

"attends its benignant " "attends her benig- 
nant " 
185 14 "And to confess the Truth of this Degree of "And to confess the 

Suspicion, I" Truth, of this Degree 

of Suspicion I " 

185 23 "poor Hare, who" "poor Hare, which 1 ' 

193 11 ["for Crime read Shame" is the direction in "Errata" but the 
change was not made in any copy of the second edition I have seen. 
The change was made in the 4 vol. edition, 1749, Vol. m> p. 133, 
lines 20, 21.] 

212 16 "nor know nothing" "and know nothing " 

231 13 "made amends by" "made amends for" 

235 20 "Grace had risen " "Grace had raised " 

270 9 " Lalagem' 1 '' "Lalagen " 

294 13 "Alternative" "Alteration " 

VOL. V 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

Title 12 "Catharine-Street^'' " Catharine-Stueet " 



6 




35 


1 


-69 




90 


20 


90 


2 5 


91 


3 


no 


12 


in 


22 


120 


1 


122 


8 


"43 




144 




169 


27 


169 


28 


179 


3 



136 



HENRY FIELDING 



PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION 

24 Has 28 lines 

24 4 Has quotation mark before "answered." 

24 7 Has no quotation mark after "Madam" 

24 17 Has quotation mark before " Fitzpatrick. 

25 Has 25 lines 

66 20 "Mrs. Cannister" 

113 1 "humourous Character" 



172 
181 
182 

223 

249 
251 
263 
272 
274 
282 
282 
283 



2 5 
27 
20 
12 
10 

2 5 
9 



"existed in the World;" .... 

"in the Affection" 

"bringing into your Family." 



"for I cannot, nor will not live 1 



not sit , 

"two three times;" 

"who the Lade was.", 
"that I would think of 
"as she ascribed". . . . 

"for this Step" 

"had never yet" 

"in the Way of Jones" 



SECOND EDITION 

Has 27 lines. 

Has none. 

Has quotation mark. 

Has none. 

Has 26 lines. 

"Mrs. Miller." 

"humourous Charac- 
ters " 

" existing in the World ;" 

"on the Affection " 

" bringing her into 
your Family." 

"for I cannot nor will 
live " 

"not sat " 

"two or three times;" 

"who the Lady was." 

"I would think of " 

"she ascribed " 

"on this Step " 

"had ever yet " 

"in his Way," 



VOL. VI 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION 

Title 8 Lines project to left beyond "By'' 
17 "die?" at foot of page 



26 Has 26 lines 

26 "having" at foot of page . 



27 Has 25 lines . 

46 Has 29 lines . 

49 Has 30 lines . 

59 Has 28 lines . 



SECOND EDITION 

"By" projects beyond 

lines. 
"Cradle?" at foot of 

page. 
Has 25 lines. 
"Western,'''' at foot of 

page. 
Has 26 lines. 
Has 28 lines. 
Has 29 lines. 
Has 29 lines. 



EDITIONS OF "TOM JONES" 137 

PAGE LINE FIRST EDITION SECOND EDITION 

75 Has 29 lines Has 28 lines. 

81 Has 11 lines in first f Has 10 lines in first % 

81 Has 7 lines in last ^f Has 8 lines in last % 

106 Wrongly numbered "109'" Correctly numbered. 

115 Has "self'' at foot of page Has "is" at foot of 

page. 

130 Has 28 lines Has 27 lines. 

148 Has "2" at foot of page No "2." 

173 Has "4" at foot of page No "'4." 

183 Has "Gen- - " at foot of page Has "Gentleman," at 

foot of page. 
247 Has "such" at foot of page Has "you" at foot of 

page. 
286 Has "rest" at foot of page Has "of" at foot of 

page. 

Note. — In volume I, page 210, line 7, the first edition refers to 
the man to whom Black George sold the hare as "The Higler." In 
the second edition this is printed "Highler," and the spelling is changed 
back to "Higler" in the four volume edition of 1749 (vol. I, p. 147, line 
30). If a third edition of the six volume edition appeared this error 
may have been corrected in it. So also in volume IV, p. 193, line 11, 
the direction in the "Errata" is "for Crime read Shame" As noted 
this change was not made in the second edition, but if there was a 
third edition in six volumes it may have been made there. 

In the list of "Errata" referring to volume III, page 330, line 14, 
it says "read came.'" This is an error in the "Errata" list, and the 
word should have been printed there "come." The change was made 
in the four volume edition of 1749, volume II, p. 303, line 31. Here 
again it would be interesting to know if the change was made in any 
copy of the six volume edition. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Addison, Joseph, 62, 99. 

Address to Fame, Fielding's, IOO. 

Advertisement of Tom "Jones, 131. 

ALneid, Virgil's, 61. 

Akenside, Mark, 80. 

Allen, Ralph, of Prior-park, 60, 61, 71, 77; as the original of "All- 
worthy," 93. 

Allibone, S. Austin, 12, 115. 

Airworthy, Miss Bridget, 88. 

Airworthy, Squire, 88; character of, 96; suggested by Ralph Allen 
and George Lord Lyttleton, 92, 93; discards Jones, 90, 108; re- 
covery of, 95; residence Sharpham-park, not Prior-park, 88, 89; 
suggested also by Hagley-park, 92. 

Amelia, 23, 72, 97, 98, 99; characters in, from Fielding's plays, 97, 
98; Fielding received £800 or £1,000 for, 79; Fielding's copy of, 
64; improbabilities of, 98; plot, 89; published, 73. 

Amelia, character of, founded on Mrs. Fielding, 43, 55, 56, 57, 59, 93; 
from Mrs. Bellamont in The Modern Husband, 97, 98; appearance 
at the prison, 98; residence in Salisbury, 34. 

Anachorism in Tom Jones, 89. 

Anachronism in Tom Jones, 89, 90. 

Andrew, Sarah, 31, 32, 33. 

Andrew, Solomon, 31. 

Argyle, John Duke of, as the patron of Fielding, 38. 



142 HENRY FIELDING 

Aristotle, 48. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, on Tom Jones, 99. 

Atala'ide, Racine's, 94. 

Athenceum, 31. 

Atkinson, Serjeant, 89, 97. 

Augustus, a Tom Jones of the time of, 99. 

Austen, Jane, author of Emma, 89; her novels free from errors, 93. 

Austrian colors, 43. 

Autobiography of Shakespeare, 90. 

Avon, bridges over the, 90, 91, 108, 109. 

Barbauld, Mrs. Anna Letitia, 115. 

Barnet, Herts, III. 

Basingstoke, Hants, 29, 68. 

Basire, James, engraved first portrait of Fielding, 14. 

Bath, Col., in Amelia, 97. 

Bath, 60, 62, 74, 91; Mayor of, 62; Fielding at (1742), 52; Fielding and 
Lyttleton at, 91 ; Fielding residing near (1744), 60; Markhand's lec- 
ture on, 96; Sarah Fielding's monument in the Abbey-church in, 25. 

Bath and Bristol, bridges between, 90, 91, 108, 109; road from Lon- 
don to, 109. 

Bathurst, Lord, 70, 71. 

Bathurst, Peter, 70. 

Bedford, Duke of, 61; Correspondence of John Duke of, 69. 

Bedfordshire, in. 

Beggars Opera, 34, 36. 

Bell Inn, Gloucester, 91. 

Bellamont, Mr. and Mrs., the suggestion of Booth and Amelia, 97. 

Bellaston, Lady, 94; relations with Jones, 95; possibly taken from 
Lady Townshend, 93. 



INDEX 143 

Bennet, Mrs., in Amelia, 97. 

Biographica Britannica, 1 05. 

Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, 1 3. 

Biographies of Fielding, 113-128. 

Blifil and Tom Jones, 88. 

Boileau-Despreaux, Nicolas, 100. 

Book-plate of Earl of Denbigh, 105. 

Booth, Lt., in Amelia, 23, 97; resembles Fielding, 45, 56, 59; com- 
pared with Jones, 97; suggested by Bellamont in The Modern- 
Husband, 97. 

Booth, Mrs., Fielding's first wife, 43, 55, 56, 57, 59, 93. 

Bridges over the Avon, 90, 91, 108, 109. 

Bristol, 91; bridges between Bristol and Bath, 90, 91, 108, 109; 
Jones on his way to, 90; road from London to Bath and Bristol, 
109; soldiers march to Hambrook from, 92. 

British Itinerary, by Paterson, 109. 

Brown, Armitage, 90. 

Brunswick, the House of, 63. 

Burke, Sir Bernard, Peerage, 21. 

Bute, Lady, on Fielding's first wife, 43, 57, 58. 

Byron, Lord, 96. 

Calderon de la Barca, Don Pedro, 35. 

Callan, Viscount, George Fielding, 21. 

Canning, Elizabeth, 74. 

Censorship of plays, 47. 

Cervantes, — Saavedra, Miguel de, 82, 90, 99; errors in Don Quixote, 

93- 
Chalmers, Alexander, 74, 77. 
Champion, The, 49, 52, 63. 



i 4 4 HENRY FIELDING 

Characters in Amelia, 43, 55, 56, 57, 59, 93, 97, 98. 

Characters in Tom Jones, 93. 

Chester and Coventry to London, road from, no. 

Chew, the river, 109. 

Chubb, Thomas, the deist, was original of "Square/' 93. 

Church and the gentry, 22. 

Cibber, Colley, 76, 82; in Love in Several Masques, 34. 

Clarke's Gazetteer, 29. 

Claverton, near Prior-park, 60. 

Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning, 74. 

Cockain, Bridget, 23. 

Cockain, Scipio, 23. 

Coke, Sir Edward, Lord chief justice, 48. 

Coleshill, Berks, inn at, no, III. 

Congreve, William, 53. 

Correspondence of John Duke of Bedford, 69. 

Covent Garden Journal, 74; profits of, 79, 80. 

Coventry, Warwickshire, 109, no; on the road to, 89. 

Craddock, Miss Charlotte, Fielding's first wife, 40, 44. 

Craddock, The Misses, of Salisbury, 30, 44. 

Creasy, Edward S., Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, 115. 

Criticism of Fielding by Gibbon, 105. 

Croker, T. Crofton, n. 

Cry, The, by Sarah Fielding, 26. 

Cumberland, Duke of, 66. 

Cunningham, George G., 115. . 

Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonson, 83. 

Dante, Alighieri, The Inferno, 85. 
Daventry, Northamptonshire, no, in. 



INDEX 145 

David Simple, by Sarah Fielding, 26, 67; credited to Henry Fielding, 

107; introduction by Henry Fielding, 60, 106, 107. 
Day, William, 106. 
Denbigh, house of, 20, 21; not from the Hapsburgs, 105; liveries, 

42, 43- 

Denbigh, Basil Fielding, Earl of (1703), 104, 105; Sir William Field- 
ing created Earl of, 21. 

Desmond, George Fielding, Earl of, 21. 

Dobson, Austin, 106, 116, 117, 118. 

Donne, Dr. John, 22. 

Dowling, the attorney in Tom Jones, 89. 

Dowling, W., The Eton Portrait Gallery, 1 18. 

Dream in The Guardian, 84. 

Dunstable, Bedfordshire, in. 

Ealing, Fielding's cottage near, 75. 

East Stour, Dorsetshire, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30; Fielding's residence at, 

47> 48, 49- 
Edgar and Edmund of King Lear, 88. 
Editions of Tom Jones published in 1749, 131, 132, 137. 
Edwards, Miss, kept Lord A. Hamilton, 95. 
Egotists, literary, 100. 
Eighteenth century prose writers, 80. 
Election, The, 46. 

Elwin, Rev. Whitwell, Some XVIII Century Men of Letters, 118. 
Emma, by Jane Austen, 89. 
English manners in the eighteenth century, 99. 
Errata page in Tom Jones, 130, 131, 132. 
Errors in Don Quixote, 93; in Tom Jones, 89-93, 107; in The Vicar 

of Wakefield, 93. 



146 HENRY FIELDING 

Eton College, Henry Fielding at, 26, 27. 

Evesham, Sophia meets the Irish Lord at, 109; Sophia and Mrs. 

Fitzgerald at, no, III. 
Exegi Monumentum of Horace, 100. 

Falconer, Dr. Wilbraham, 62. 

"Fanny" in Joseph Andrews as Fielding's wife in humble rank, 83. 

Farquhar, George, 35. 

Fatal Curiosity, The, by George Lillo, 46. 

"Feilding" or "Fielding," 21. 

Fielding arms, 41, 42, 43. 

Fielding family, in East Stour, 25. 

Fielding, Rev. Allen, son of Henry by second wife, jj. 

Fielding, Amelia, daughter of Henry by second wife, JJ. 

Fielding, Ann, 25. 

Fielding, Basil, Earl of Denbigh (1703), 104, 105. 

Fielding, Beatrice, 25, 26. 

Fielding, Catherine, 25. 

Fielding, Damian, son of Henry by second wife, Jj. 

Fielding, Edmund, Major General, father of Fielding, 23, 24, 25, 28, 

Fielding, Edmund, Jr., 25, 26. 

Fielding, Eleanor Harriet, daughter of Henry by first wife, JJ. 
Fielding, George, Viscount Callan, Earl of Desmond, 21. 
Fielding, Haddington, son of Henry by second wife, JJ. 
Fielding, Henry, biographies of, 15, 1 13-128. 

— allowance from his father, 28. 

— appearance, 28, 63, 75. 

— as a barrister, 51. 

— as a magistrate, 69, 72. 



INDEX 147 

Fielding, Henry {continued): 

— as a Whig, 86. 

— at Bath, 62, 91. 

— at Ealing, 75. 

— at East Stour, 24, 40, 41, 42, 45. 

— at Eton, 26, 27. 

— at Leyden, 27, 33. 

— at London, 36, 37, 38, 39. 

— at Milford, 30. 

— at Twickenham, 67. 

— at Twiverton, 60. 

— attempted elopement with Sarah Andrew, 31, 32, 33. 

— birthplace, 23, 88. 

— chambers at Pump Court, 49. 

— character vindicated, 19, 20, 76. 

— children by first wife, 59, yy. 

— children by second wife, JJ. 

— courtship and marriage to Miss Craddock, 40, 41, 44. 

— cousin of Lady Mary W. Montague, 22. 

— credited with writing David Simple, 106. 

— credited with writing Roderick Random, 107. 

— criticized, 70, 72, 99, 105, 107. 

— death, 75. 

— debt to Moliere, 81. 

— devotes himself to literature, 28, 51. 

— devotes himself to law, 27, 47, 48, 49. 

— dissipation, 36, 37. 

— distress in 1742-43, 52. 

— dramatic career, 34, 35, 36, 46, 47, 52, 53, 54, 81. 

— dress, 37, 38. 



148 HENRY FIELDING 

Fielding, Henry {continued) : 

— earnings as a playwright, 35. 

— entered at Middle Temple, 47. 

— family, 59, 77. 

— grandfather's will, 105. 

— habits, 54, 75, 76, 107. 

— home life, 57, 58, 59. 

— house at East Stour pictured, 40. 

— improvidence, 80. 

— intimacy with Warton family, 29. 

— life, according to Horace Walpole, 70. 

— life after return from Holland, 30. 

— life in the country, 45. 

— literary acquaintances, 80. 

— liveries at East Stour, 40, 41, 42, 43. 

— married life, 43, 44. 

— noble ancestry, 20. 

— novels, 99. 

— pecuniary circumstances, 78, 79. 

— pension, 63, 78. 

— plays furnish characters for Amelia, 97, 98. 

— portrait by Hogarth, 4. 

— portrait in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 14. 

— portrait in town hall, Taunton, 12. 

— poverty, 57, 58, 59. 

— references to his first wife, 56, 59. 

— relations with Rigby, 70, 71. 

— residence at East Stour, 24, 40, 41, 42, 45. 

— residence at London, 36, 37, 38, 39. 

— residence at Milford, 30. 



INDEX 149 

Fielding, Henry (continued): 

— residence at Twiverton, 60. 

— respect for virtue, 76. 

— returns from Leyden to England, 27, 28. 

— second marriage (to wife's maid), 63, 64, 65, 76, ']']. 

— style, 83, 100. 

— takes Haymarket Theatre, 45, 46. 

— taste for natural scenery, 91. 

— theatrical career ends, 47. 

— treatment of his first wife, J^. 

— victim of the gout, 51, 62, 72. 

— wife (first), 43, 55, 56. 

as Amelia, 93. 

as Fanny, 83. 

as Mrs. Heartfree, 86. 

as Sophia, 93. 

not in Journey to Next World, 84. 

Fielding, Henry, principal works, 81-99. 

— Address to Fame, ioo. 

— Advice to the Nymphs of New S m, 29, 30. 

— Amelia, 23, 34, 36, 43, 55> 5 6 > 57, 59> 6 4> 73, 79, 8 9> 93, 97, 9 8 > 99- 

— A Clear State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning, 74. 

— Covent Garden Journal, 74. 

— Defence of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, 51, 52. 

— Description of U n, G , 29. 

— Don Quixote in England, 46. 

— Historical Register for 1736, 47. 

— Inquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, 72. 

— Introduction to David Simple, 106, 107. 

— Jacobite's Journal, 68. 



150 HENRY FIELDING 

Fielding, Henry {continued) : 

— Jonathan Wild, 55, 71, 85, 86, 87. 

— Joseph Andrews, 36, 51,61, 67, 82, 83, 84. 

— Journey from this World to the Next, 36, 53, 55, 61, 84. 

— Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 63, 75, 76, 107. 

— Justice Caught in his own Trap, 97. 

— Life and Death of Common Sense, 46. 

— Love in Several Masques, 34. 

— Miscellanies, 55, 68, 87, 106. 

— Miss Lucy in Town, 52, 55. 

— Pasquin, 46. 

— Preface to David Simple, 60, 106, 107. 

— Proposal for making an Effectual Provision for the Poor, 74. 

— Remedy of Affliction for the Loss of our Friends, 56. 

— The Champion, 49, 52, 63. 

— The Election, 46. 

— The Good Natured Man, The Fathers, or, 53. 

— The Miser, 39, 81. 

— The Mock Doctor, 81. 

— The Modern Husband, 86, 97. 

— "The Queen of Beauty t'other Day," 30. 

— The Temple Beau, 35, 97. 

— The True Patriot, 59, 68. 

— The Universal Gallant, 41. 

— The Wedding Day, 3J, 53, 54, 55. 

— "To Miss H — and at Bath," 52. 

— Tom Jones, 14, 60, 61, 71, 76, 79, 87-96, 99, 105, 107, 129-137. 

— Tom Thumb, 80, 81. 

— "Verses," 55. 

Fielding, Rev. Dr. John, 21, 22, 23. 



INDEX 151 

Fielding, Sir John, 21, 42, 64, 70, 78. 

Fielding, Louise, daughter of Henry by second wife, 77. 

Fielding, Mary M., Henry Fielding's second wife, 64, 65. 

Fielding, Sarah, author of David Simple, 24, 25, 26, 42, 50, 60, 66, 67, 

105, 115. 
Fielding, Sophia, owned miniature of Henry Fielding, 14. 
Fielding, Ursula, 25. 

Fielding, William, son of Henry by second wife, 77. 
Fielding, Sir William, Earl of Denbigh, 21. 
Fitzgerald, Mrs., at Evesham, no. 
Fox, Henry, 27. 
Fox-Davies, A. C, 105. 

Frasers Magazine, Keightley's Life of Fielding in, 12, 13. 
Freeholder, Addison's, 62. 

Garrick, David, posing for Fielding's portrait, 13; in The Wedding 

D "y, 53, 54- 

Gay, John, author of The Beggar s Opera, 34. 

Genealogist, 105. 

General Advertiser, 131. 

Gentleman s Magazine, The, 45, 51, 66, 90, 105, 107. 

Gibbon, Edward, on Fielding, 105. 

Glastonbury, Somersetshire, 23; Bell inn at, 91; Abbey, 88. 

Gloucester, Jones meets Dowling at, 89; Jones and Partridge leave, 90. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 23, 83, 84, 93, 99. 

Good Natured Man, The, or The Fathers, 53. 

"Gosling Scrag," Lord Lyttleton as, in Peregrine Pickle, 65. 

Gosse, Edmund, 118. 

Gothic architecture of Allworthy's house, 89. 

Gould, Davidge, 105. 



152 HENRY FIELDING 

Gould, Sir Henry, 23, 24, 28, 105. 

Gould, Sarah, 23, 24. 

Gould, William Day, 24, 105, 106. 

Gout, Fielding a victim of, 51, 62, 72. 

Graves, Rev. Richard, author of The Spiritual Quixote, 60. 

Gray's Inn Journal, 74. 

Grecian architecture of Prior-park, 89. 

Greenley, Canon, 31, 60, 93. 

Guardian, The, dream in, 84. 

Gypsies in the barn, no. 

Hagley Park, Lord Lyttleton's residence, 62, 91, no; as All- 
worthy's residence, 92. 

Hale, Dr., Master of Cathedral School, as "Thwackum," 93. 

Hambrook, Gloucestershire, Jones meets Quaker at, 90, 91; Jones 
arrives at, 108; soldiers at, 92. 

Hamilton, Duke of, 95. 

Hamilton, Lord Anne (son of preceding), kept by Miss Edwards, 95. 

Hapsburg, House of, 20, 21, 43, 105. 

Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor, 72, J^. 

Harrison, Dr., in Amelia, 97. 

Havard, J. A., Notice sur Fielding et ses Ouvrages, 119. 

Haymarket Theatre, 45, 46. 

"Heartfree," in Jonathan Wild, 86. 

Henley, W. E., Essay on Henry Fielding by, 119. 

Henry III of England, 20. 

Herbert, David, Memoir of Henry Fielding by, 119. 

Highgate, Middlesex, in. 

Historical Register for 1 736, 47. 

Hoadly, Dr. John, erected monument to Sarah Fielding, 25. 



INDEX 



35 



Hoddington House, Hants, 29. 

Hogarth, William, 13, 14, So, 125, 126. 

Holyhead from Dublin, HO. 

Horace's Exegi Monumentum, IOO. 

Horseback riding tor ladies, 99. 

Hutchins, I.. History and Antiquities of the Court: of Dorset, 25. 40. 

Improbabilities, in Amelia, 98. 

Inquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers, ~l. 

Introduction to David Simple, 106, 107. 

Ireland, Samuel, 13. 

Irish Lord, 109, no. 

Jasobite's Journal, 68. 

James, Colonel, in Amelia, 98. 

jeaffreson, I. Cordv, Novels and Novelists, 119. 

Jesse, J. Heneage, Memoirs of Celebrated Etonians, 120. 

Johnson, Roger, of Newgate, 86. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 80. 

Jonathan Wild, 55, 71, 85, 86, S7. 

Jones, Tom, and Bliril the Edgar and Edmund of King Lear, SS; 
at inn on way to Coventry, no; at Upton with Mrs. Waters, 95; 
compared with Booth, 97; crosses the Avon, 90, 108; dismissed 
bv Allworthv, 90, 108; dress of, 38; going as a soldier, 92; going 
to London, 92; leaves Gloucester, 90; mother thought to be 
Mrs. Waters, 96; on his wav to Bristol, 90; punished for mis- 
doing, 96; why made illegitimate, SS; supply of money, 10S; vices 
of, 94. 

Jonson, Ben, Cxnthia's Revels, 83. 

Joseph Andrews, 36, 51, 61, 67, 82, 83, 84. 



154 HENRY FIELDING 

Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 63, 75, 76, 107. 
Journey from this World to the Next, 36, 53, 55, 61, 84. 
Julian, the Apostate, 84. 

Justice Caught in his own Trap, The Debauchees, or, 97. 
Juvenal, the sixth Satire of, 32, 33. 

Keightley, Thomas, biography of, II, 12, 13; errors in Tom Jones, 
107, 108, 109, no, in; errors of, no, in; letter to Notes and 
Queries, 106; life of Fielding, 12, 13, 17-101, 120; on bridges over 
the Avon, 109. 

Keynsham, bridge over the Avon near, 108, 109. 

King Lear, 88. 

Kingston, Duke of, 22. 

Kippis, Andrew, 21, 105; Biographica Britannica, 105. 

Lane, Thomas, Master in Chancery, 72. 

Lawrence, Frederick, Life of Henry Fielding, 12, 13, 19, 20, 21, 25, 

26, 31, 38, 39, 43, 47, 49, 61, 64, 66, 67, 73, 74, 77, 120. 
Lesage, Alain Rene, author of Gil Bias, 99. 
Leyden, Henry Fielding at, 27. 
Licensing act, 47, 86, 87. 
Life and Death of Common Sense, The, 46. 
Life of Jonathan Wild the Great, 55, 71, 85, 86, 87. 
Lillo, George, The Fatal Curiosity, 46. 
Literary egotists, 100. 
Littleton, Thomas, 48. 
London, Irish Lord posting to, no; by Chester and Coventry, road 

to, no; by Oxford, road to, 109; to Bath and Bristol, 109. 
Love in Several Masques, 34. 
Lowell, James Russell, 14, 120. 



INDEX 155 

Lyme Regis, Dorset, 31, 32, 33; History of Lyme Regis, 31. 

Lyttleton, George Lord, 27, 38, 39, 63, 65, 69, 70, 71, 80, 88; at 
Bath, 91; at Hagley Park, 62, 91; in part the original of "All- 
worthy," 93; taste for natural scenery, 92; Tom Jones dedicated 
to, 60, 61. 

Lyttleton, Sir Thomas, 91, 92, 93. 

Macintosh, Sir James, 73. 

Macklin, Charles, in The Wedding Day, 53. 

Markhand, James H., lecture on Bath, 96. 

Malaprop, Mrs., founded on "Slipslop," 83. 

Marlborough, John, Duke of, 41, 60. 

Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, 51, 52. 

Marraton, vision of, in The Spectator, 84. 

Matthews, Miss, in Amelia, 97, 98. 

Mazzard Hill, between Gloucester and Upton, 91. 

McSpadden, J. W., Henry Fielding, 120. 

Meehan, J. F., of Bath, 109. 

Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, by Creasy, 115. 

Middlesex, Fielding magistrate for, 69. 

Milford, Fielding's residence at, 30. 

Millar, A., publisher, 107, 131. 

Miller, Mrs., boarding-house keeper in Tom Jones, 95, 96. 

Milton, John, 100. 

Miscellanies, by Henry Fielding, 55, 68, 87, 106. 

Miser, The, 39, 81. 

Miss Lucy in Town, 52, 55. 

Mock Doctor, The, 81. 

Modbury, South Devon, 31. 

Modern Husband, The, 86, 97. 



156 HENRY FIELDING 

Modern, Mr. and Mrs., as Captain Trent and Miss Matthews, 98. 

Moliere, Fielding's debt to, 81. 

Monmouth and the bridge over the Avon, 109. 

Montague, George, Walpole's letter to, 70. 

Montague, Lady Mary Wortley, 22, 28, 56, 57, 58, 59, 64, 80, 100. 

"Moria," in Cynthia's Revels, 83. 

Motcombe, County Dorset, 106. 

Mudford, William, Life of Henry Fielding, 121. 

Murphy, Arthur, Life of Fielding, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, ^J, 3 8 > 39> 

40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48,5°* 5 X > 53> 54, 55, 6 4, 69, 71, 72, 74, 77, 

78, 121. 
"Murphy" the Salisbury Attorney in Amelia, 71. 

Newcastle, Duke of, 74. 

Newgate, 86. 

Newgate Calendar, 85. 

New Sarum, Salisbury, 30. 

Newton bridge, 109. 

Nichols, John, History of Leicestershire, 22, J J; Literary Anecdotes 

of the Eighteenth Century, 14, 121. 
Northamptonshire, no, in. 
Notes and Queries, 105, 109. 
Novels of Fielding, 99. 

Odiham, Hants, 29. 

Old Bailey, 85. 

Old days and new, 98. 

Oldfield, Mrs. Anne, in Love in Several Masques, 34. 

Oliver, Rev. Mr., tutor to Henry Fielding, 26. 

Oxford, Sophia at, no, in; to London, road from, 109. 



INDEX 157 

Page lxiii in the second edition of Tom Jones, 131, 132. 

Palace of Death, Fielding's description of, 84. 

Pamela, the inspiration of Joseph Andrews, 82. 

"Parson Adams," was Edward Young, 83; the original of the Vicar 

of Wakefield, 84; travels of, 92. 
Partridge, , leaves Gloucester, 90; trouble with the Gypsy woman, 

no; tells Jones Mrs. Waters was his mother, 96. 
Pasquin, 46. 

Paterson's British Itinerary, 109. 
Pension, Fielding's, 63. 

Peregrine Pickle, on Fielding's second marriage, 64. 
"Peter Pounce," was Peter Walter, 83. 
Pitt, William, at Eton, 27. 
Plato, 48. 

Plays of Fielding and Amelia, 97, 98. 
Plot of Amelia, 89 ; of Tom Jones, 89. 
Pompey the Little, Lady Tempest in, 93. 
Pope, Alexander, 71, 100. 
Portraits of Fielding, 4, 12, 14. 
Preface to David Simple, 60, 106, 107. 
Pretender at Preston Pans, 62. 
Primrose, Mrs., in Vicar of Wakefield, 84. 
Prior-park, 60, 61, 62, 88, 89. 
Pritchard, Mrs., in The Wedding Day, 53. 
Proposal for making an effectual Provision for the Poor, J4.. 
Prose writers, of the eighteenth century, 80. 
Provoked Husband, The, 34, 36. 
Pug's letter, in The Spectator, 84. 
Pultney, William, Earl of Bath, 86. 
Pump Court, Fielding's chambers in, 49. 



158 HENRY FIELDING 

Quaker directs Jones to Inn, 90. 
"Queen of Beauty t'other Day," 30. 

Racine's Atalaide, 94. 

Ralph on The Champion, 52. 

Rebellion of 1746, 63. 

Rehearsal, The, 46. 

Remedy of Affliction for the Loss of Our Friends, 56. 

Rhein-filding, 21. 

Rhodes, Mr., married Sarah Andrew, 34. 

Rhodes, Rev. Mr., of Bath, 31, 32. 

Rich, Christopher, 34. 

Richardson, Samuel, 44, 56, 76, 82, 88. 

Richly, Lord, as Col. James, 98. 

Richmond, Duke of, 38, 39. 

Rigby, Richard, 70, 71. 

Roads, from Bath or Bristol to Hagley Park, 91; from Evesham to 

Coventry, no; Chester to London, no; Coventry to London, 91, 

no. 
Roberts, George, History of Lyme Regis, 31. 
Robertson's Topographical Survey of the Great Road from London to 

Bath and Bristol, 109. 
Roderick Random, credited to Fielding, 107. 
Roscoe, Thomas, Life of Fielding, 107, 122. 
Round, J. H., 105. 
Roxborough, Duke of, 38. 

Saintsbury, George, 107, 122. 

Salisbury, 30, 33, 34, 41, 43, 44; characters in Tom Jones at, 93. 

Sclater, Wm. Lutley, 29. 



INDEX 159 

Scott, Sir Walter, 68, 81, 88, 99, 123. 

Scriblerus Junior, 81. 

Seagrim, Molly, 94, 95. 

Segur, M. de, Le Portrait de Fielding, 13. 

Sevigne, Mme. de, 57. 

Shakspeare, William, 21, 81, 83, 90; King Lear, 88. 

Sharpham-Park, near Glastonbury, Somerset, 23, 24, 25, 26, 89; 

birthplace of Fielding, 88. 
Side saddles at the inns, 99. 
Sixth Satire of Juvenal, 32, 33. 
"Slipslop," in Joseph Andrews, 83. 
Smith, George Barnett, 123. 
Smollett, Tobias, 23, 76, 125, 126. 
Soldiers' march from Bristol to Hambrook, 92. 
Sophia, and Sarah Andrew, 31, 32; as Fielding's wife, 55, 56, 93; 

at Coventry, no; at Dunstable, in; at Evesham, no; character 

of, 96; crosses the Avon, 91, 108; meets the Irish Lord, 109; 

route of, from Coventry to London, no, in; supply of money by, 

92, 108. 
Spectator, The, 49; Pug's letter in, 84; vision of Marraton in, 84. 
Spondy, Mr., in Peregrine Pickle, 65. 
Square, original was Thomas Chubb, 93. 
St. Albans, Herts, in. 
Stapfer, Paul, 124. 

Steevens, George, Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, 13. 
Stephen, Leslie, Memoir of Henry Fielding, 124. 
Stony Stratford, Bucks, no, in. 
Stour, East, Dorsetshire, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 40, 41. 
Strahan, John, land surveyor of Bristol, 109. 
Stratford, on the Ouse, 109, no, in. 



160 HENRY FIELDING 

Summer to Winter in Tom Jones, 90, 108. 

Surface, Charles and Joseph, in The School for Scandal, 88. 

Swift, Jonathan, 71. 

Taine, H. A., 124, 125. 

Tatler, The, 49. 

Taunton, Bust of Fielding at, 12. 

Tempest, Lady, from Lady Townshend, 93. 

Temple Beau, The, 35, 97. 

Temple, Middle, 47. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 125, 126, 127. 

Thompson, James, 80, 91. 

Thwackum, from Dr. Hale, 93. 

Title-pages to Tom Jones, 14, 130. 

"To Miss H — and at Bath," 52. 

Tom Jones, 71, 87-96; advertisement of, 131; beginning of, 60; 
criticised, 94, 96, 99, 105; dedicated to George Lord Lyttleton, 60, 
61; errors in, 89-93, 107; first and second editions compared, 129- 
137; Gibbon on, 105; in the time of Augustus, 99; plot of, 89; 
published, 76, 131; sold for £700, 79; title-pages to, 14, 130. 

Tom Thumb, 80, 81. 

Townsend, George H., Life and Works of Henry Fielding, 124. 

Townshend, Lady Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess, as Lady Bellaston, 
or Lady Tempest in Pompey the Little, 93. 

Travelling without money, 92. 

Trent, Captain, as Mr. Modern, 97. 

True Patriot, The, 59, 68. 

Trumble, Alfred, Henry Fielding, 127. 

Trulliber, Parson, and the Rev. Mr. Oliver, 26. 

Tucker, Andrew, of Lyme Regis, 31, 32. 



INDEX 161 

Twickenham, Fielding at, 65, 67, 68. 

Twiverton, near Bath, Fielding's residence at, 60, 61, 62. 

Universal Gallant, The, 41. 

Upton, Worcestershire, 91; Jones and Mrs. Waters at, 89, 95; the 

flight from, 109. 
Upton Grey, County Hants, 29. 

Vane, Lady, wife of William Viscount Vane, and heroine of Smollett's 

"Memoirs of a Lady of Quality" in Peregrine Pickle, 95. 
Verses by Fielding in the Miscellanies, 55. 
Vicar of Wakefield, 83, 84, 93. 
Vices, of Tom Jones, 94; of our forefathers, 98. 
Virgil's Mneid, 61. 
Virtue, George, 107. 

Vision of Marraton, in The Spectator, 84. 
Voyage to Lisbon, 63, 76, 107. 

Walpole, Horace, 70, 72, 107. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 47, 76, 85, 86, 87. 

Walter, Peter, as " Peter Pounce," 83. 

Warburton, Rev. Win., 61. 

Warner, R., History of Glastonbury, 24. 

Warren, Samuel, Law Studies, 12. 

Warton family, of Basingstoke, Hants, 29. 

Warton, Joseph, 66, 67, 68. 

Warwick, Warwickshire, 109. 

Waters, Mrs., at Upton with Tom Jones, 89, 95; thought to be 

mother of Jones, 96. 
Watson, William, Life of Fielding, 85, 127, 128. 



i6 2 HENRY FIELDING 

Watt, Robert, Bibliotheca Britannic a, 1 28. 

Wedding Day, The, 37, 53, 54, 55. 

Welch, Saunders, Fielding's successor as magistrate, 78. 

Western, Mrs., 94. 

Western, Squire, crosses the Avon, 91, 108; originals of, 93. 

Westminster and Middlesex, Fielding magistrate for, 69. 

Westminster Hall, 49, 51. 

Wharncliffe, Lord, on Fielding's first wife, 57, 58; on his second 

marriage, 63, 64. 
Whetstone, Middlesex, in. 
Whig, Fielding as a, 86. 

Whipple, E. P., Life and Works of Henry Fielding, 128. 
Whitfield, Mr. and Mrs., of the Bell inn, Gloucester, 91. 
Wilks, Robert, in Love in Several Masques, 34. 
Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 27, 70. 
Wilson, Mrs., 83. 

Wiltshire sessions, attended by Fielding, 51. 
Winnington, Thomas, at Eton with Fielding, 27. 
Winter from Summer in Tom Jones, 90, 108. 
Woffington, "Peg," in The Wedding Day, 53. 
Wycherley, William, 35, 53. 

Xenocrates rather rare, 95. 

Xenophon's Memorabilia, translated by Sarah Fielding, 26. 

Young, Edward, author of Night Thoughts, the original of " Parson 
Adams," in Joseph Andrews, 83. 



Privately printed for the Rowfant Club 

by The Arthur H. Clark Company, 

Cleveland, MDCCCCVII 
















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